German Building Rules: National DIN Numbers, State-by-State Law

One country, two layers of rules

Germany doesn’t have a single national building code the way Ireland or New Zealand does. Instead, there are two layers, and knowing which one to reach for is the first thing to get right.

The first layer is national technical standards — DIN norms like DIN 18065 for stair geometry, DIN 18040-2 for accessible ramps, and the Eurocodes (DIN EN 1992, DIN EN 1997) for structural and foundation design. These are written once, for the whole country, and a chippy in Hamburg reads the same DIN 18065 table as a chippy in Munich.

The second layer is building law, and that’s where Germany genuinely differs from most of the other countries on this site. There is no federal building code. Building law is made by each of the 16 Länder (states), under its own Landesbauordnung (LBO) — Bavaria’s BayBO, North Rhine-Westphalia’s BauO NRW, and so on. A DIN standard only becomes legally binding where a Land’s LBO, or its Verwaltungsvorschrift Technische Baubestimmungen (VV TB), says it does — or where the LBO simply restates the figure directly in its own text, which is exactly what happens for the numbers a chippy needs most: room height and guard heights.

Why this actually matters on site

For most of what you set out with a tape — stair rise and going, ramp gradients, the shape of a foundation — the national DIN figures are the whole story, and they don’t change from Land to Land.

But two figures that matter just as much on an ordinary house are not set nationally at all:

• Minimum room height (lichte Raumhöhe). There’s a model figure of 2.40 m in the non-binding Musterbauordnung (MBO) that most Länder roughly follow — but it’s genuinely not uniform. Baden-Württemberg, Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein set 2.30 m. Bavaria and Sachsen-Anhalt exempt an ordinary one- or two-family house from any fixed minimum at all. Several other Länder give a reduced figure specifically for small residential buildings. There is no single “German room height” — the number that binds you depends on which Land you’re building in.
• Guard/parapet heights (Umwehrung). Most Länder follow the same MBO model baseline, but not all state it the same way. North Rhine-Westphalia spells out the exact centimetre figures in its own statute. Bavaria’s law simply requires a guard to be “sufficiently high and sturdy,” with no number in the text at all.

Boundary setbacks (Abstandsflächen) and the size threshold for a permit-free garage or carport (verfahrensfreie Vorhaben) work the same way — a Land-level rule, not a national one.

Where the by-Land figures live

Once a Land’s page is published, this hub lists it below with the figure that Land actually sets, so you can jump straight to the one that applies where you’re building. Until then, treat any room-height or guard-height number you see quoted for “Germany” with suspicion — ask which Land’s LBO it actually comes from.

Before you rely on any figure

Every DIN standard cited on these pages is a commercial standard — DIN e.V. doesn’t publish free full text, so the figures here are drawn from consistent, repeated professional and technical guidance quoting the standard, not from din.de itself. Each of the 16 Länder also amends its own LBO on its own timetable — several have changed recently (Berlin’s room height dropped in December 2024, Saarland’s in April 2025, Schleswig-Holstein adopted a wholly new LBO in July 2024). Always confirm the current edition of the DIN standard, and the current text of your Land’s LBO, before you rely on a number here.