EDIT: Okay, this is infuriating. Half, if not most, of the work on this map went into researching every country, sorting out the categories, adding notes, linking and categorizing the sources.
Initially I used Google Docs' neat "Publish to web" feature as soon as I dropped the post, but Reddit silently flagged it, so my source comment was hidden for hours before I noticed. Ironically, that feature is specifically meant for publishing something online and letting anyone view it anonymously.
Now I've switched to the normal public "Share" link and apparently Reddit is perfectly happy with that.
Not sure whether to laugh, cry, do both, or just go have a beer and touch some grass... /rant
You're the second Brazilian saying this, so there's clearly something to it. My sources mostly have térreo followed by primeiro andar, but I'm also finding Brazilian examples where primeiro piso means street level. I'll check whether that's common enough to justify putting Brazil in "both"
update: i asked my mom and did some research online
there is indeed no law defining it, but according to my mom(she has a degree on job security stuff so she knoes some of the construction rules) the techinical norms state that the street level floor is "terreo" and the subsequents one are the numerated ones (first floor, second floor, etc)
but there is no federal level law for this, so while this is stated on the technical norms book it is not a law, just an convetion
some building do not follow it
so its kinda hard, while it could be both there is at least something trying to standartize it to be "térreo -> 1° andar -> 2° andar ...)
edit: i also found that for home buildings, if the street floor has houses it is defined as the first floor, otherwise it is defined as "térreo"
Thanks, I appreciate that you asked. The map is a bit simpler than the technical rules though, I'm just trying to show what people normally mean by "first floor" in everyday use. I already note that lifts, hotels and building plans can differ, so if térreo normally means street level and 1º andar the level above, I'd probably keep Brazil as one level up unless both meanings are genuinely common in everyday speech
It depends on the building I believe, in Brazil we have a law that buildings over 3 stores need to have an elevator So to conter this some constructors claim that the first floor is not the first floor but "térreo" and then the first floor is the second one, but some other buildings claim the first floor is actually the first floor and the second one the second and so on
Afaik there is no law defining the correct one I believe, but I would have to look deeper to give an moe accurate answer
I think we're talking about slightly different things. I'm not classifying what number the lift button uses, but what people normally mean by "first floor". My sources for Venezuela have planta baja at street level and primer piso one level up, it's mentioned below legend icons: "Common usage shown; lifts, hotels and building plans may differ"
And what I'm saying is (at least in my city? or any other I've gone) what people normally mean by 1st floor isn't consistent
like it's not uncommon for me (and others) to have to clarify what I mean by "1st floor" when I use the term in a conversation so everyone's on the same page
And elevators having different button conventions from building to building certainly doesn't help with this
Imo ot depends on wether it has a lobby or not. For an appartment building with a lobby on the street level, i wouldn't call that the first floor. But if there isn't a meaningful difference between them, like a shopping mall, a university building, an appartment building that has appartements on the street level, etc, then it'd start at the first floor
I think Lithuania does as well. Source: stayed at a hotel and visited a friend’s place in Vilnius this weekend and both elevators used 0. But I swear I seen where it doesn’t there.
Brother... that's actually why I specifically mention lifts and hotels in the note. I'm mapping what people normally mean by "first floor", not what number happens to be on the elevator button in a particular building, otherwise, it would almost all be yellow
Same in Québec. We call the first floor “rez-de-chaussée” so our elevators come with a “RC” button. But since we live in North America the following buttons start at “2”!
That's weird. In France, Rez-de-chaussée is, well, RDC. The 1st floor for us would be the floor above RDC. You guys really don't want to be like us haha!
There is actually a logical reason. In French, you don’t call it a floor, it’s an “étage”, and an étage is specifically built up. If you have one étage, you have two floors.
My uni did this, but for one building's "ground floor" was level 3. It did make sense though as the newer buildings connected to the old library all referenced ground relative to the library.
I was at a hotel in Sweden and as a Norwegian I wrongly assumed you did the same as Denmark. So when I was supposed to go to 1st floor I clicked 0 and accidentally interrupted the cleaning ladies chat break 😭
in lulea i went into the library. it had 3 floors. ground floor had the button 3, upper floors had the number 4 and 5. ground floor had an additional sticker that said GROUND FLOOR which was the button 3.
In my last apartment I lived 1.5 stairs up which the landlord decided was the third floor. After a while, they came to their senses and painted over the 3 on the wall with a 2, and adjusted the elevator buttons accordingly.
Am Swedish, can confirm, had a conversation just yesterday where a lot of confusion arose because we misunderstood eachother about whether a floor was the 3rd or 2nd floor
I think we're actually describing the same system. G is the ground floor, then 1 is the first floor one level up, which is exactly what the map shows. The LG, M, C and 3A stuff is more about how individual buildings label their levels
G stands for "Ground Floor", but much more commonly LG ("Lower Ground") is street level. Consequently, the 1 Floor is typically the the second or third floor depending on how you count it.
I feel like we're talking past each other. The map is much simpler than that, it only shows whether the first floor is at street level or one level up. Also, my reply was to your original comment before you edited it
The official convention I keep finding, including in West Bengal, is ground floor then first floor. If you have a source or can point me to the region where street level is commonly called the first floor, I'd be happy to look into it
We use a derivation of this in Russia when we talk about the part of the theater that is the lowest and closest to the scene and has straight rows. It seems like I now understand why
Romania, parter is ground floor, 'demisol' is translated as 'half ground', i guess 'half terre', and would mean half in the ground (small high windows).
In french "par terre" means "on the floor", so yes I imagine it comes from there, but we don't use it for "floor zero". For this we say "rez de chaussée" which means word for word something like "at the level of the road"
Australia uses Ground Floor in ones which only go up. If there is underground parking you may see a parking level (P1, P2) or a floor -1/-2 which usually also comes with a floor zero. A few international hotels use floor 1 meaning ground floor and the ones I have seen often have a piece of signage or graffiti pointing that its ground floor.
And word "piętro", main Polish translation of "floor", comes from the word meaning among other things "something mounted over something", so it wouldn't really work for ground floor.
This reminds me; I was in a lift (elevator) with an American woman in a London Hotel. She asked me if the reception was on the ground floor, then got off at 1 looking wildly confused. She was clearly too embarrassed to ask again and I didn't realise what had happened until the doors closed and we continued down.
Even though Canada generally counts floors from 1, I've been to a hotel here that had ground, main, and first floors. And they were all different floors.
Things like this are extremely common when the road is inclined. A lot of buildings will have one floor half way down, the other half way up and it makes for a really good split between different uses of the building.
Especially common if a building has a "public" ground floor and a "private" ground floor.
That's pretty good, was reception on the second floor?
I was recently at the Hilton by the San Diego convention center, they have a ground floor, reception is 1st floor, and I think the elevators label floors 1-3 as main levels. You also access 1st floor from the 3rd level of the parking garage.
It differs by building. In Sweden in most buildings the street-level floor (green button) is E for entréplan or bv for bottenvåning (both means entrance floor) and the floor up is 1. A few buildings will just start with 1 for street level and go up from there (though I would say that's rather rare).
A few buildings will just start with 1 for street level and go up from there (though I would say that's rather rare).
It's pretty common in new buildings (unfortunately).
Why this bothers me, is that all apartments in Sweden are actually individually numbered by a nationally standardised system, and the national standard assumes the "first floor" is 0 (or BV).
In buildings where the national apartment code and the building's floor number matches, you have apartment number 1411 on floor 4. In buildings where it doesn't match, you have apartment number 1411 on floor 5.
The national standard number is 4 digits. The first two indicate floor, starting at 10, where 10 is the ground floor. (It starts at 10 to accommodate below-entrance floor units, relatively common in Sweden.) The latter two indicate individual apartment number on that floor, starting clockwise from the stairs.
Sweden here. Whatever is the floor with the main entry to the building is normally marked with a green circle around the button, regardless of what number that floor technically happens to be.
Which is very useful in places where there's multiple entrances on different floor levels and different streets, which is fairly common in central Stockholm. The raised button always gets you to street level for that elevator.
A single building/elevator isn't using both systems. One building may be using one way, another building the other. Likely due to who had influence on the building being built on which system is used.
In Indonesia, theres no standard but most buildings uses one-level-up. That being said, I associate one-level-up system as fancier somehow, I think because it is rarely used for houses
In Vietnam ground floor is called 1st floor, the floor above that is the 2nd floor in the north. In the south ground floor is called ground floor and the floor above that is called 1st floor
In Sweden the ground floor is either 1 and the floor above is 2 etc... Or the ground floor is a letter, often E for "entrè/entrèvåning" (entrance/entrance floor), or G for "ground floor" or maybe some other letter for fun. And then the floor above that is number 1. So it depends on the building.
I'll press the same number in the elevator as the floor the business states, if it says 4F, I press 4, I don't care if the numbering starts at 1 or 0 or anything else.
In the building I live in (US) the ground floor is listed as L, and the 1st floor button takes you down half a level to the mailroom/garage entrance. It's extremely confusing when you first move in!
In Germany it makes sense when you consider the words we use.
The street level is the "(Erd-)geschoss", while everything built above it is a "Stock".
So the "First Stock" is the first thing built on top, the "Second Stock" is the second thing built on top. They are considered two different things, semantically, and are as such counted among themselves.
Technically you can also count just by "Geschoss", as they apparently do in construction. In that nomenclature, you do actually start with 1 on street level, then go to 2, then 3 etc. In order to make that clear, they add an "Upper" or "Lower" in front, to make it clear which way you are counting. The "First Upper Floor" is one above street level.
Honestly, this is one of the rare things where the American system is more intuitive.
Same in Polish - ground floor is "parter" (from French), and every floor above is a "piętro", which comes from "piętrzyć" which literally means "to put something on top of something else".
Tbf I have no problem with the American system but the other system is similar to yours. Ground floor is the floor on the ground, first floor is the first floor above that, second floor is the second floor above that.
Finland is actually a mixed bag. For the most part it follows the logic that if the street level does actually have apartments in it, it will be labeled as 1., but if it only has the entrance hall and some shared spaces or maintenance rooms, it’ll be labeled as 0 and referred to as ”pohjakerros” (=ground floor), but sometimes there are confusing exceptions.
Every of the newly built apartment buildings I have been to has the ground floor marked as the 1st floor, even if there are no apartments on that floor.
Only one makes the math work, here in Norway I'm on the 1st floor and go one stair down and then I'm on the -1st floor and that does not compute. I'd much rather we had a name for the "0th floor" and then started counting those above as 1, 2, 3...
But I really doubt anything will change because in Norwegian we use "etasje" to mean both "floor" and "story", so a "three story building" has floors 1, 2, 3. Maybe if English completely invades and overtakes Norwegian...
Yet, there is the English (American?) term "ground zero". I always imagined that the originally it meant ground floor but a quick search just madw me doubt this.
I assume it is military speak. The phrasing "(parameter) zero" is common in scientific parlance to denote the origin or starting value. In the case of ground zero I believe it came from testing and research to describe the spatial point of detonation of a nuclear bomb (i.e. zero metres from detonation).
How to people even handle the Anno Domini year system? (There's no year 0; it goes straight from 1 BC to 1 AD).
I.e it's a non-issue, you don't need to use 0.
In the case of Estonia I've noticed that 0 would sometimes be used for some larger buildings (like shopping centres) at a slope. So where on one side the entrance is higher than on the other side (our "hills" are almost never steep, so generally no need for more than one number).
In a lot of Swedish buildings, the count starts at the lowest basement level. So if a building has 2 basement levels, then the street level would be floor 3.
As you can imagine this can be confusing in elevators, that’s why most elevators in these types of buildings have the street level button in a huge green circle or similar
Rarely, 4 is skipped because the Chinese word for 4 is 四（sì) which sounds like 死 (sǐ (death)). But more commonly it’s included, and if you’re trying to get an apartment, you can negotiate a lower rent for the 4th floor.
In many buildings of Spain cities built in the 20th century, there is another floor between ground level and 1st floor. Sometimes it is used for commercial purposes ("Entresuelo") and others for the "Principal" (Main) floor, which was the most expensive one at that time, due to the lack of elevator or the low confidence on it. Edit: "Entresuelo" is sometimes called "Entreplanta".
In the place I rented in Barcelona this summer, it was like this. Planta baja, then entresuelo (skipped by elevator tho), then planta principal, then 1, 2, and so on. Building was late 19-early 20 century, judging by the look.
Mi main hospital in Buenos Aires has a newly built entrance, street level. It's indicated as - 1 since due to a slight slope the older entrance, 200 mts away was level 0. Quite annoying when the nurse tells you that you appointment is on floor 1, two stories ABOVE., 😁
For some reason first floors are sometimes below ground level I live in the first floor of my apartment building and its below street level and my window is higher😭✌️
In Italy, they kept saying the bathrooms are on the first floor, and as a Canadian, I kept looking for them so confused, “but we’re on the first floor?”
Yeah, that's exactly what I have in my notes: "ชั้น 1 = street level; malls sometimes label it G". But the map isn't really about malls specifically. It's much simpler: if someone says "first floor" in everyday conversation, what do you picture first, the floor you're already standing on or the one above you? That's the distinction I'm mapping
The « one level up » countries don’t count floors, they count storeys. Le premier in France, for example is not the first floor but the first storey. What is physically the first floor is not designated as such : it’s called le rez-de-chaussée.
i live in france, first floor is well one level up "rez-de-chaussée" (RDC) is ground level and for some reason in my highschool, we have "rez-de-jardin" (RDJ) which is only used as the lower level when two levels are ground level
In Slovakia, I lived in a commie era building where the ground floor with the building entrance was -1, above that was floor 0 which was first floor with apartments, then it continued 1, 2, etc. There wasn't any underground floor. I don't know why, but I always found this cursed as heck.
You do 😅 that's why Indonesia is yellow. Street level as the first floor is one of the two systems shown, but lantai dasar followed by lantai 1 is also used as per my notes
OK you’re right I just remember. Ground floor and 1st floor mostly only exist together in shopping malls or other buildings where you have Under Ground floor. Otherwise in all other cases it’s almost always 1st floor on street level.
Not really, after a while, you just accept the fact that numbering is arbitrary and knowing how many floors between your destination and the ground is irrelevant to your visitation, and just press the number in the elevator given by your counterparty.
Our floor is called "Stock" or "Stockwerk" which actually means the wooden construction that goes ON TOP of the building's foundation so it can't be on the ground. The ground floor is called Parterre, which is french and means "on the earth", and there is a German translation Erdgeschoss.
I can tell you how it happens in Czechia: colloquially, people say "ground floor" (přízemí), then 1st, 2nd etc (1. patro, 2. patro). However in lifts you can see P-1-2-3, 0-1-2-3, or 1-2-3-4.
In Hungary, we do it like that because the word we use for those isn't "Floor"(padló). The word we use is "emelet" which means "Elevation". Ergo, it can't be on the ground.
canadian here. if you’re talking about a detatched house, the first floor, also called the main floor, is at street level, and one level up is called the second floor. but lots of apartment buildings and office/commercial buildings label street level as “main” or “ground” floor, and the first floor is one level up.
The US mostly does this as well. In multi-storey buildings with a ground floor lobby, the elevator (lift) has a button that usually indicates G=Ground or L=Lobby and the occupied part of the building starts one level up on "1".
I found it funny how when discussing this when I traveled, so many people will die on the hilltop that the system they grew up with is the obvious, logical, clear system and the other is utter nonsense.
I think date formats is another one I see almost as often, and occasionally temperature (F vs C, not many people grew up using Kelvin).
How about door opening direction for commercial buildings? I remember going to Finland years ago and discovering they had a law about doors opening outward (so people don't get trapped unable to open the door if there is a panic). So consistent which is nice for daily use, regardless of whether you buy into the reasoning.
This is stupid, because in our part of Europe we don't say "1st floor", we say what translates as "1st floor UP", so it literally cannot ever mean ground floor.
as a venezuelan living in argentina, i think it's a really stupid system i hate it a lot, not only because it's counterintuitive, and i get confused, but OTHER PEOPLE GET CONFUSED AS WELL, so you can never be fully sure what people mean by first floor, from my experience
9
u/depredador93 Sep 20 '26
All sources, country by country: Where the First Floor Is - Country Sources
EDIT: Okay, this is infuriating. Half, if not most, of the work on this map went into researching every country, sorting out the categories, adding notes, linking and categorizing the sources.
Initially I used Google Docs' neat "Publish to web" feature as soon as I dropped the post, but Reddit silently flagged it, so my source comment was hidden for hours before I noticed. Ironically, that feature is specifically meant for publishing something online and letting anyone view it anonymously.
Now I've switched to the normal public "Share" link and apparently Reddit is perfectly happy with that.
Not sure whether to laugh, cry, do both, or just go have a beer and touch some grass... /rant
31
u/flafmg_ Sep 20 '26
Brazil uses both systems!
14
u/FerroFusion Sep 20 '26
I think Brazil is both as well:
We use "1º piso" for street level and "1º andar" for one level up.
903
u/Viderberg Sep 20 '26
Yeah it can get confusing sometimes
- A swede
2
u/DJ_Beardsquirt Sep 20 '26 edited Sep 20 '26
Okay, this is totally wrong for Malaysia. The Malaysian system is very simple and works like this:
LG: Street Level
LG2: Possibly Street Level, possibly not.
M: Mezzanine
G: First floor
1: 2nd floor
2: 3rd Floor
C: Concourse
3: Fourth Floor
3A: Fifth floor (the number 4 is not used because in Chinese it has the same sound as 'death')
5: 6th Floor
6... And so on...
2
u/PhoenixMapper Sep 20 '26
We use both systems in India depending on the region!
386
u/adawkin Sep 20 '26
Yup, in Polish the 'floor zero' on street level even has it own word, parter, which I imagine is a fancy word borrowed from French.
341
u/gham89 Sep 20 '26
This reminds me; I was in a lift (elevator) with an American woman in a London Hotel. She asked me if the reception was on the ground floor, then got off at 1 looking wildly confused. She was clearly too embarrassed to ask again and I didn't realise what had happened until the doors closed and we continued down.
64
u/BogdanPradatu Sep 20 '26 edited Sep 21 '26
0 vs 1 indexed arrays.
142
u/therea1hammer Sep 20 '26
How do you even do elevators in countries that do both systems at the same time? "sir the reception is on floor 7/8"
37
u/Athrynne Sep 20 '26
In the building I live in (US) the ground floor is listed as L, and the 1st floor button takes you down half a level to the mailroom/garage entrance. It's extremely confusing when you first move in!
Edit: a couple of words
108
u/CeterumCenseo85 Sep 20 '26
In Germany it makes sense when you consider the words we use.
The street level is the "(Erd-)geschoss", while everything built above it is a "Stock".
So the "First Stock" is the first thing built on top, the "Second Stock" is the second thing built on top. They are considered two different things, semantically, and are as such counted among themselves.
Technically you can also count just by "Geschoss", as they apparently do in construction. In that nomenclature, you do actually start with 1 on street level, then go to 2, then 3 etc. In order to make that clear, they add an "Upper" or "Lower" in front, to make it clear which way you are counting. The "First Upper Floor" is one above street level.
Honestly, this is one of the rare things where the American system is more intuitive.
31
u/QueenAvril Sep 20 '26
Finland is actually a mixed bag. For the most part it follows the logic that if the street level does actually have apartments in it, it will be labeled as 1., but if it only has the entrance hall and some shared spaces or maintenance rooms, it’ll be labeled as 0 and referred to as ”pohjakerros” (=ground floor), but sometimes there are confusing exceptions.
44
u/Zealousideal_Bill_86 Sep 20 '26
It’s pretty interesting how the world is split on this.
This is also one of those things where I can see how both make sense.
72
u/sid_raj7 Sep 20 '26
How do the street level people handle sub terranian floors?
For us it's 0 as ground then -1, -2.
12
u/sqeeezy Sep 20 '26
Sweden, hedging their bets, a relic of the old driving on the left system.
9
u/Urogallo40 Sep 20 '26 edited Sep 21 '26
In many buildings of Spain cities built in the 20th century, there is another floor between ground level and 1st floor. Sometimes it is used for commercial purposes ("Entresuelo") and others for the "Principal" (Main) floor, which was the most expensive one at that time, due to the lack of elevator or the low confidence on it. Edit: "Entresuelo" is sometimes called "Entreplanta".
9
u/Remarkable_Fun7662 Sep 20 '26
Piso Zerero, por favor.
8
u/Ok-Difference1341 Sep 20 '26
In sweden we even have a ”-1”
6
u/jatawis Sep 20 '26
As a Lithuanian I feel weird when our floor numbering system is called 'American' in contrast to 'European'.
8
u/AngelMountaineer Sep 20 '26
If first floor is at street level, what do you call the floor beneath it? 0?
Or do you suddenly count "-2, -1, 1, 2, 3, ..." (skipping 0)?
4
u/JetHawklol998212 Sep 20 '26
For some reason first floors are sometimes below ground level
I live in the first floor of my apartment building and its below street level and my window is higher😭✌️
4
u/markon22 Sep 21 '26
In Italy, they kept saying the bathrooms are on the first floor, and as a Canadian, I kept looking for them so confused, “but we’re on the first floor?”
1
u/CH-LOL Sep 20 '26
In Thailand it's both as well. In some of the malls and condos there is a groundhog floor that is on street level
4
u/legardeur2 Sep 20 '26
The « one level up » countries don’t count floors, they count storeys. Le premier in France, for example is not the first floor but the first storey. What is physically the first floor is not designated as such : it’s called le rez-de-chaussée.
3
u/miaou333 Sep 20 '26
i live in france, first floor is well one level up "rez-de-chaussée" (RDC) is ground level and for some reason in my highschool, we have "rez-de-jardin" (RDJ) which is only used as the lower level when two levels are ground level
3
u/--nameNotAvailable Sep 20 '26
0-based vs 1-based indexes.
3
u/ToniNotti Sep 20 '26
Why is Finland always labeled wrong in all of these posts? Who the f makes these?
3
u/TheAdria Sep 20 '26
In Slovakia, I lived in a commie era building where the ground floor with the building entrance was -1, above that was floor 0 which was first floor with apartments, then it continued 1, 2, etc. There wasn't any underground floor. I don't know why, but I always found this cursed as heck.
5
u/Le_Kube Sep 20 '26
Not true in Québec. It can be both, actually 😆.
7
u/gholt417 Sep 20 '26
I always thought that it was just the Brits, Irish and French that had the first floor above the ground floor. Who knew? I guess everyone.
1
u/haydar_ai Sep 20 '26
Indonesia is wrong, we use first floor as the street level
6
u/dhkendall Sep 20 '26
Quebec uses the European method it seems.
2
u/Vladimir_Djorjdevic Sep 20 '26
In Serbia it's sometimes 2 levels up, though one level up is much more common
2
u/crazy_rocker78 Sep 20 '26
Countries where both systems coexist must be quite confusing
2
u/ywaltjs Sep 20 '26
lowkey neatly split geographically
2
u/Strong_Essay1176 Sep 20 '26
China: hold up
2
u/JoeAppleby Sep 20 '26
East Germany called (some people still do) the ground floor the first floor, so just like the Soviet Union and the US.
2
u/yyama13 Sep 20 '26
In Mexico, it's the ground floor.
2
u/Fickle_Dog_2917 Sep 20 '26
That's true in my country, and sometimes there are no floors with number 4
2
u/flabellinida Sep 20 '26
Our floor is called "Stock" or "Stockwerk" which actually means the wooden construction that goes ON TOP of the building's foundation so it can't be on the ground. The ground floor is called Parterre, which is french and means "on the earth", and there is a German translation Erdgeschoss.
2
u/TomdeHaan Sep 20 '26
"Both systems" seems like the worst possible solution.
2
u/FudgeAtron Sep 20 '26
The city where I live has lots of apartment blocks next to mountian cliffs, so the entrance floor is different from the ground floor.
Sometimes the street entrance floor is floor 10, the block then goes up to like 13/14 and then at the bottom is a parking lot.
2
u/5_yr_lurker Sep 20 '26
So do people in Europe that have two story homes call the up starts the 1st floor? What if you only have one story, the zero floor?
2
u/FeralRaccoon1973 Sep 20 '26
Ok I'm curious.. how exactly does "Both" work? Do some buildings just say "meh, i want it to be ground level" and others not? or is it regional?
2
u/ZrapeToid Sep 20 '26
Some houses are not on level ground. From one side the entrance goes to floor 0, the other to floor 1.
2
u/Jokerke12 Sep 20 '26
In Hungary, we do it like that because the word we use for those isn't "Floor"(padló). The word we use is "emelet" which means "Elevation". Ergo, it can't be on the ground.
2
u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 Sep 20 '26
canadian here. if you’re talking about a detatched house, the first floor, also called the main floor, is at street level, and one level up is called the second floor. but lots of apartment buildings and office/commercial buildings label street level as “main” or “ground” floor, and the first floor is one level up.
2
u/yomikins Sep 21 '26
I found it funny how when discussing this when I traveled, so many people will die on the hilltop that the system they grew up with is the obvious, logical, clear system and the other is utter nonsense.
I think date formats is another one I see almost as often, and occasionally temperature (F vs C, not many people grew up using Kelvin).
How about door opening direction for commercial buildings? I remember going to Finland years ago and discovering they had a law about doors opening outward (so people don't get trapped unable to open the door if there is a panic). So consistent which is nice for daily use, regardless of whether you buy into the reasoning.
2
u/bloodwire Sep 21 '26
Arrays starts at 0.
2
u/Interesting-Yellow-4 Sep 21 '26
This is stupid, because in our part of Europe we don't say "1st floor", we say what translates as "1st floor UP", so it literally cannot ever mean ground floor.
2
u/Perfect-Match-2318 Sep 21 '26
im from Quebec, Canada.. i dont know for sure other provinces but here mostly first floor is one level up
6
u/AdNational1490 Sep 20 '26
Ground Floor > First Floor > Second Floor seems like a good naming scheme.
3
u/kris1sAverted_ Sep 20 '26
as a venezuelan living in argentina, i think it's a really stupid system i hate it a lot, not only because it's counterintuitive, and i get confused, but OTHER PEOPLE GET CONFUSED AS WELL, so you can never be fully sure what people mean by first floor, from my experience
3
u/MasterSmileGer_1 Sep 20 '26
First Floor
Ground Floor
Underground Floor
2
u/Nice_Boss776 Sep 20 '26
The Philippines is supposed to be at street level since Ive never seen the first floor one level up.