They likely do not live in an apartment and are trying to apply their home office square footage to an apartment. Based upon the many zoom backgrounds of coworkers and interview candidates, many set at most a desk as a permanent WFH space. The more common is not having any exclusively WFH spaces and using the work laptop in various sources throughout their apartments.

1200 sqf is on the larger side of a 2br apartment but rooms are not normally 300 sqf. A 2/2 apartment usually has following "rooms": 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 storage closets, HVAC closet, laundry, and a living room combined with kitchen. Out of these, the living room/kitchen area might be 300 sqf or more, the rest of the rooms are much smaller. The OP likely meant 25% of living space, e.g. taking away one bedroom and its bathroom and storage since your working there would render them unusable to other people living in the same household.

> since your working there would render them unusable to other people living in the same household.

This part is particularly interesting. My 150sq ft office has a laundry rack because I didn't protest putting it there.

My co-worker lives in a detached house so his office space is larger, but again - laundry rack.

We have power dryers in the US, they are installed together with washing machine in a laundry room/closet. In houses people often put them in the garage because they can be quite noisy.

With that comment I was referring to the fact that to me in a 150sq ft office there's still room for something with a fairly large footprint. Perhaps I was too specific about what exactly.

Ah, people can have all kinds of furniture in their "offices", the point is that it's useless to others while that person works. Unless it's also unheard about having an uninterrupted work environment in your country it should be pretty obvious.

1200sq ft is "decent" I would say. For a single or two person household at least.

I would hate to try to WFH in a 1200sq ft place with family though. I think at least a floor of separation would be needed, lol

This is the kind of culture clash I was fishing for here!

If someone from my corner of the world made the same statement I would make light of them, calling them "temporarily embarrassed Americans".

Personally I wouldn't know what to do with 1000sq ft and up, but this comment makes me think that I perhaps simply lack imagination.

>Personally I wouldn't know what to do with 1000sq ft and up

Well, its easy for me :P

Server rack, 3D printing station/workshop, home gym, kitchen, storage, bathroom, yard equipment (typically a garage, tbf), home theater, deck (does this count?), kids rooms, etc.

That certainly wouldn't fit into 1000sqft.

I mean, I believe its totally possible to live within 1000sqft. You just have to "give up" a lot of things or a lot of potential... but you also gain some. I hate mowing the yard, for example, lol.