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Years ago, before my husband Joe and I were a couple, we were part of a large group of friends who would sometimes travel together. We – males and females ranging from our 20s to our 40s – were all close and had no qualms about sharing hotel rooms. So depending on the vacation, it wasn’t unusual for 2 to 4 of us to share a room in an effort to save on hotel expenses.

Anyway, one of our friends, Heidi, would always request that we get a corner room, “because it was bigger.” The rest of us would kind of give her side eye about this, because we never noticed that a corner room at Hotel X, Y, or Z was any larger than a non-corner room. But she would insist that it was.  And she’d say it as if everyone knew this, it was a fact of life and how had we lived on this earth for (at the time) 20-something years and not know it???

Heidi’s no longer with us, but every time Joe and I get a hotel room at the end of the hallway (read: a corner room), I think of her and her insistence that corner rooms in hotels were bigger.

So, ARE the corner rooms actually bigger?

The answer to this is a definite “it’s complicated.” It really depends on the hotel.

When they’re the same size

Some hotels tend to have rooms that are virtually cookie-cutter. Every room – including the corner rooms – is exactly the same in every way, including size.

When just a few rooms are larger

Others are cookie-cutter but with a few rooms (yep, including a corner or two) that are a little bit bigger.

In this case, Room 500 appears to be larger than the others, but Rooms 503, 535, and 536 are all the same size as the rooms adjacent to them.

And at this hotel, 702 is larger, but 703, 706 and 707 are the same as all the rest.

When the corner room actually is larger

Having the corner room that’s bigger does happen. Sometimes it’s rooms 500 or 702 from above. Or perhaps the hotel has it built as a suite. Like, in this case, room 2036:

Or rooms 201, 230 and maaaaaybe 203 in this Holiday Inn hotel:

Corner rooms still have advantages, even if they’re not bigger

Even if a corner room isn’t particularly larger than the other rooms in the hotel, it can still have its advantages.

• Depending on the building’s architecture, you may have 2 (or even 3!) windows instead of 1. Of course, you may also get the same 1 window as everyone else because there’s an emergency stairway at the very end of the hallway.
• You may be closer to the emergency stairway.
• You only have 1 next-door neighbor who might be noisy, not 2.
• You’re further away from the elevator and there’s less foot traffic in general.

Should you ask for a corner room?

That’s a Your Mileage May Vary sort of thing. If it’s a hotel where the corner rooms ARE indeed bigger, you may be asked to pay a higher rate for having a better room. Alternatively, it may be a cookie-cutter hotel where the corner rooms are identical to every other room. If nothing else, you may get a handful of the advantages we mentioned earlier – and that may or may not cost you.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary