Does Spain Have a National Minimum Room Height?

The requirement

The CTE sets no national minimum ceiling height for a dwelling. There is no room-height figure to hit in the national code. Each of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities sets its own, in its decreto de habitabilidad (housing decree). The one hard national number the CTE does set for every home is ventilation.

No fixed ceiling height in the CTE. A full search of DB-SUA, DB-SE-C and DB-HS finds no habitable-room height minimum. The only height figure in the code is DB-SUA 2’s headroom rule. That rule says 2.10 m in restricted-use circulation zones and 2.20 m elsewhere. The Ministry’s own note on the clause limits it to circulation zones. That means hallways and landings, not a living or sleeping room. Don’t read a headroom figure onto a bedroom ceiling.

Ceiling height and room area are regional. Ireland’s TGDs simply leave the question open. Spain instead hands it to a different legal instrument. Its 17 autonomous communities each set their own minimum room height and floor area. Each region writes them into its own habitability decree. That decree is not a Documento Básico. It does not get amended alongside the CTE, and it runs on its own numbering. So this page gives no single figure. With 17 separate decrees, one region’s number would be wrong for most readers. Need a room-height or room-area figure for your job? Check the decree for the region you are building in, not the CTE.

No national daylight rule either. We found no window-area-to-floor-area rule in the CTE for a dwelling’s rooms. No daylight-factor rule appears in DB-HS or anywhere else in the code. If a natural-light figure applies to your job, it too comes from the regional decree.

The one hard, national number: ventilation

Ventilation is where the CTE bites, for every dwelling in Spain. The rule is DB-HS, Sección HS 3 (“Calidad del aire interior”), Tabla 2.1. It sets minimum constant-flow ventilation rates by dwelling size:

Dwelling size	Main bedroom	Other bedrooms	Living/dining	Min. total (wet rooms)	Min. per wet room
0–1 bedrooms	8 l/s	–	6 l/s	12 l/s	6 l/s
2 bedrooms	8 l/s	4 l/s	8 l/s	24 l/s	7 l/s
≥3 bedrooms	8 l/s	4 l/s	10 l/s	33 l/s	8 l/s

Alongside the table:

1.5 l/s per habitable room during unoccupied periods. It is a background, purge-type minimum (§2, point 2).
50 l/s minimum extract at the kitchen cooking zone. It sits on top of the general figures above (§2, point 4).
The design basis behind the table: mean annual CO₂ under 900 ppm. The yearly excess above 1600 ppm must stay under 500,000 ppm·h (§2, point 1).

Work it out on site

Say you are designing a 2-bedroom dwelling and need to check the ventilation totals. Floor area is 75 m².

Add the dry-room minima. 8 + 4 + 8 = 20 l/s, not 24 l/s.
Check wet-room extraction. Table 2.1 requires 24 l/s in total for the wet rooms, with at least 7 l/s per wet room. Two rooms at 7 l/s give only 14 l/s, so that arrangement is insufficient.
Check the whole system. Match the air coming in, passing between rooms and flowing out. The cooking-zone extract of at least 50 l/s is independent of general ventilation.

The total and per-room wet-room requirements must both be met. Your real dwelling’s room count and layout change which rows apply. There is no calculator on this page for this. The ventilation table is a design input. It is not a single-number sum like a stair riser or a concrete volume.

Part of the Spanish Building Regulations hub — one national code, with the DBs that set the rules.
Building the stairs, and need the headroom and step numbers? See Spanish stair & barrier rules: riser, going, handrails, guarding.

Sources

CTE DB-HS — Salubridad, Sección HS 3 “Calidad del aire interior”, Tabla 2.1 (constant-flow ventilation minima), §2 points 1–2 (CO₂ design criterion, unoccupied-period minimum), and §2 point 4 (kitchen extract). Read it in the official DB-HS PDF.
Regional habitability decrees. Minimum ceiling height, room area and (where it exists) natural light are set by each autonomous community’s own decreto de habitabilidad — a separate instrument from the CTE, not verified or enumerated here. Check the decree for the autonomous community you’re building in.

Read this first. These ventilation figures are from the current DB-HS articulado (Real Decreto 450/2022, de 14 de junio). Always confirm the current DB-HS text at codigotecnico.org before you rely on any figure here.

Frequently asked questions

Does the CTE set a minimum ceiling height for a dwelling?

No, not the CTE. A full search of DB-SUA, DB-SE-C and DB-HS finds no national ceiling-height minimum for a habitable room. DB-SUA 2's 2.10 m / 2.20 m headroom rule covers circulation zones only, like hallways and landings. Room height is set by each autonomous community's own habitability decree (decreto de habitabilidad).

Is there a national minimum room area?

Not in the CTE. Minimum floor areas, for a room or a whole dwelling, sit with each autonomous community's habitability decree. Like ceiling height, no Documento Básico sets them.

Why doesn't this page just give the regional numbers?

Because there is no one number to give. Spain has 17 autonomous communities. Each has its own habitability decree, on its own numbering, not amended with the CTE. One region's figure sold as "the Spanish minimum" would be wrong for most of the country. So this page says plainly that the CTE sets none.

Do rooms need a minimum amount of natural light?

No CTE minimum was found. No window-area-to-floor-area or daylight-factor rule appears in DB-HS or anywhere else in the CTE for a dwelling's rooms. Like room height and area, a natural-light figure, where one applies to your job, comes from a regional habitability decree, not the national code.

What ventilation numbers are actually mandatory?

DB-HS HS3 Table 2.1 sets rates by dwelling size. For two bedrooms, wet rooms need at least 24 l/s total extract and 7 l/s each. The dry-room rates, empty-home rate and separate cooking extract also apply. See the table and scope below.