Is there a short designation for "(first [British]|second [American]) floor of a building"?

[Tired_and_Cranky]

@Donnerwetter

The problem becomes even more pronounced in tall buildings: I have read that American buildings sometimes (often?) have no 13th floor, so there already is gap of two floors.

Often true, particularly in hotels and apartment buildings. I’ve heard it’s because superstitious people will refuse to rent rooms or apartments on the 13th floor. It doesn’t really contribute to the OP’s directions problem though because I don’t know of any 13 story buildings that aren’t serviced by elevators. He would just need to direct everyone to push the appropriately marked elevator button. It doesn’t matter whether they emerge two or 20 stories above ground level as long as they get to the right floor.

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
It is pretty uniform - we’ve been at it a while, so there’s been plenty of time for a standard to settle in.

Signs are still necessary because on exiting stairwells or lifts, or rooms, you will know where you are.
[/QUOTE]

In my limited experience, you are less likely to have standardization if there is more time for independent thought and experimentation before the preferred standards emerge. There might be more uniformity in the U.K. than in the U.S., but I don’t buy your reason.

Mops suggests that the buildings won’t have floor signs on the landings, which creates his problem presumably because everyone is expected to know whether they are on the ground floor, the first floor, etc. based on how high they have climbed. Bob++ says that at least some buildings with entrances on multiple levels will have “upper and lower” ground floors, so the absence of signs would be confusing and distance climbed doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. AK84 (who I’m not sure is in the U.K.) describes a building that would be almost impossible to navigate without floor signs. Mangetout says the buildings are all uniform but there are signs anyway because people need them. Since, even though I’m from the U.S., I was able to navigate buildings in the U.K. without ever recognizing that there was a difference in the number scheme, I’m inclined to believe I just relied on the numbers at each landing. I’m also guessing these were basically omnipresent.

OP, if there are signs, just tell people to go to the numbered floor and let everyone figure out how to get there. If there are no signs, I suggest putting them up, then telling them to go to the numbered floor. Mangetout and I will use those signs even if no one else does.

[amanset]

@Mijin

I’ve been in malls (I think in Sweden), where the floor numbering was just positive integers, even if a building had basement floors. So you could be 4 floors underground and on floor 1, or on the ground floor and it could be called floor 3.
Which is hella-confusing (and I think dangerous) because it’s easy to forget the path you’ve followed.

I guess one way which works for all is just say “We’re one floor above the ground floor”.

Yeah, in the building where I work in Stockholm the only entrance is onto floor 2. Floor 1 is the basement. Whereas where I live has the entrance on the ground floor. I live on floor 2, which follows the British pattern (it is numbered 2 in the lift).

There’s no rhyme nor reason.

[Malden_Capell]

The building I work in is two older buildings that have been combined - some walls knocked through - and it’s very weird. One end of the building has no second floor, but the other end does!

A lot of building plans called the Ground Floor ‘Floor 0’ and floors going down are negative (-1 [or sometimes B1], -2 [B2]) and those going up are positive.

Parliament, which has a naturally weird Victorian floorplan, has Ground, Principal (where the Houses are), then Mezzanine, then first, second, etc…

[Mangetout]

@Tired_and_Cranky

In my limited experience, you are less likely to have standardization if there is more time for independent thought and experimentation before the preferred standards emerge. There might be more uniformity in the U.K. than in the U.S., but I don’t buy your reason.

Sure, but once a standard is established, the longer it persists, the more nearly universal it will tend to become, absent any major thrust to change it. The UK convention is at least Medieval in origin.

Mangetout says the buildings are all uniform but there are signs anyway because people need them. Since, even though I’m from the U.S., I was able to navigate buildings in the U.K. without ever recognizing that there was a difference in the number scheme, I’m inclined to believe I just relied on the numbers at each landing. I’m also guessing these were basically omnipresent.

In my experience, there are nearly always numbers near the doors of stairwells, on lift call button plates, on the wall facing the lift, and in main corridors - because no matter the established convention, it is simply useful to be able to see at a glance where you are.
If you’re descending more than a couple of flights of stairs, it’s really easy to lose track of which floor you’re passing. If you’ve just driven up an uncounted number of ramps in a multistorey car park, you’re going to need to be sure what level you are on; if you’re not paying attention to the floor indicator inside a busy lift, it’s useful to be able to tell by glancing out of the door whether this stop is yours or not.
Buildings without any floor numbering are (I think) a rare exception.

[Leo_Bloom]

My friend lives in a crappy almost-tenement building in Manhattan with 7 floors, and the first floor, because the landlord put in a slight rise and then built steps down at the entrance, he calls “The Basement.”

Why? Over six floors, the law requires an elevator.

[penultima_thule]

Last week was attending a medical centre in Sydney.
The building had three floors above ground and two below ground for car parks.

The designation of the floors in the lifts and directory were:
-2, -1, G, 1 ,2, 3

[Melbourne]

My school got so irritated explaining which floor was which, (SB,B,LG,G, UG,1…10), that they re-numbered starting with the service tunnel at 1 and went up from there.

When I was a child in the USA, the Second Floor was the floor that you got if you had two floors. I understand that, like my school, it gets more complex if the terrain is uneven, but I’m surprised to hear that idea has been completely lost. If you’ve got a two story house, do you just call it the “upper floor”?

[UDS]

@Melbourne

My school got so irritated explaining which floor was which, (SB,B,LG,G, UG,1…10), that they re-numbered starting with the service tunnel at 1 and went up from there.

When I was a child in the USA, the Second Floor was the floor that you got if you had two floors. I understand that, like my school, it gets more complex if the terrain is uneven, but I’m surprised to hear that idea has been completely lost. If you’ve got a two story house, do you just call it the “upper floor”?

If you have a two-storey house, upstairs is called “upstairs”. In distinction to “downstairs”.

If your building has more than two stories (or if it has two stories but it’s not a single home) then - as this thread attests - nomenclature varies.

It’s an oversimplification to say that in the UK it goes ground floor, first floor, second floor, etc but in the US it goes first floor, second floor, third floor, etc. To some extent it also depends on the significance and function of the floors.

Prior to the late nineteenth century, in a high-status home the principal rooms, and often the principal entrance, were often on the second storey, This is mainly because, reliable damp-proof courses not having been developed, ground floor rooms were often subject to damp. The floor with the principal rooms got called the first floor, and below it was the ground floor and possibly below that was the basement or cellar.

Once you have damp-proof courses and buildings of four, five, six or more stories, things start to change. In an urban environment, the ground floor is still less prestigious - ground floor apartments lack privacy, for example, in comparison to apartments on the upper stories. Or, the ground floor may be given over to commercial use, with residential use above. All of this tends to sustain the distinction between the ground floor and the first floor above it. But in these buildings typically the principal entrance is on the ground floor.

Then you get office buildings, large hotels, etc, where the principal entrance, and a large lobby, and often other significant/prestigious rooms are found on the ground floor. In these buildings, the ground floor/first floor distinction makes less and less sense, so the ground floor starts to be called the “first floor” (or, sometimes, “level 1” or similar).

Where I think there might be a UK/US distinction is in relation to buildings which are single homes. In BrE the convention is still mostly that the first storey is the “ground floor”, and the story above that is the “first floor”. But I think in the US the usage derived from modern multistory buildings has been retrofitted to houses, and the first storey is more likely to be referred to as the “first floor” and the storey above it as the “second floor”.

To avoid ambiguity or confusion, eschew “floor” altogether and just go with “storey”, where the usage (though I think possibly not the spelling?) is the same in BrE and AmE.