That’s right. Seventy-seven bedrooms sit inside that massive, stone-fronted fortress near the Victoria Memorial. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly the same number of people you’d find at a medium-sized family reunion—except everyone at this reunion has their own en-suite and a butler who remembers how they take their tea. If you’ve ever tried to share a bathroom with just one other person, the idea of seventy-seven private spaces probably makes you want to weep with jealousy.
But here’s the kicker: the Royal Family doesn’t even use most of them. Imagine hosting a sleepover where you have seventy-seven beds, but you still end up sleeping in the same room as your siblings because that’s just what you’re used to. That’s basically how it works on the top floors. The working royals tend to cluster in the private apartments like high-school kids at a lunch table, leaving the rest of the palace to gather dust and the occasional ghost.
What does seventy-seven bedrooms look like in everyday terms?
Think about your own home. You know that one closet you keep meaning to organize? The one that’s become a black hole for old phone chargers and takeout menus? Buckingham Palace has whole rooms that are basically that closet, but with gilded ceilings. There’s a bedroom called the “Belgian Suite” that has been used so rarely you could probably host a game of hide-and-seek in there for a week and nobody would find you. I’d live in it just to say I had a Belgian-themed room.
Compare this to the average American home, which has about three bedrooms. We all know the drill: two for sleeping, one for “guests” that’s actually full of exercise equipment and your old college textbooks. In the Palace, they have rooms dedicated to footmen, rooms for lady’s maids, and even rooms that are just for waiting. Waiting for what? For the King to decide he wants a snack? That is a level of luxury that makes first-class airplane seats look like camping.
