A Tengah BTO Kitchen Was Called ‘Tiny’. Are HDB Flats Really Getting Smaller?

Rhys Ng runs the YouTube channel Reno Scout and works as a renovation specialist. On 8 October, he posted a walk-through of a new four-room BTO flat at Block 213B Tengah Garden Avenue, as Mothership reported.

He called the kitchen "tiny" and "problematic", and said new buyers would be "shocked". His complaints, as reported:

• No separate service yard.
• Nowhere obvious for a refrigerator, especially without getting in the way of the overhead drying rack.
• The sink and the stove would likely sit close together.
• Little room for appliances such as a rice cooker, water filter or dishwasher.

He summed it up as a "one-person kitchen": no room for a second person to help prepare food or wash up while someone cooks.

He did praise the flat's largely beamless design, which makes cabinets easier to fit. And he noted that the space beside the kitchen could become more kitchen, at the owner's cost. The video passed 110,000 views, with more than 380 comments.

On 14 October, HDB replied in a Facebook post, Mothership reported. Its argument is that the video looked at only half the kitchen.

The "small" space, HDB said, is the wet kitchen, designed to be compact and to work with the dry kitchen beside it. Together they take up about 10 sqm: roughly a standard kitchen in newer HDB flats that come with a service yard, and roughly a common bedroom.

HDB added, according to the reporting:

• The open-concept kitchen has been the standard design for new BTO flats since 2018, whenever the layout permits.
• It is flexible: keen cooks can give more space to the kitchen, others to the living or dining area.
• Floor plans with layout ideas are given to buyers before flat selection.

Not everyone was persuaded. Commenters on HDB's post repeated that two people cannot work at the stove and sink at once, and objected to the service yard being folded into the kitchen.

HDB's last point is one we can check, because we hold the sales brochure.

Block 213B belongs to Garden Waterfront I & II @ Tengah, a BTO project launched in November 2022. Its four-room plan shows:

• an approximate floor area of 94 sqm, including an internal floor area of 91 sqm plus the air-con ledge;
• a space labelled KITCHEN/UTILITY, with the washing machine and drying rack inside it;
• a DRY KITCHEN beside it, open to the living and dining area;
• no separate service yard.

A note beside the plan explains that HDB designed the four-room flats with a combined kitchen and utility space for flexibility, and that owners can add partitions to separate the dry kitchen, wet kitchen and utility area. Dotted lines show where.

So the layout was not hidden. It was printed, labelled and explained in the brochure buyers had in hand when they applied. Whether a plan on paper prepares anyone for how a kitchen feels once the fridge arrives is a fair question, but it was disclosed.

Block 213B holds 42 four-room and 56 five-room flats. Ng suggested the five-rooms would fare better, and on space they may: the plan is 114 sqm. But it too prints a combined kitchen/utility with no separate yard, as does the three-room.

Yes, but not lately. The big drop happened about a quarter of a century ago.

The fair test holds the flat type constant. We took 213,752 three-, four- and five-room resales registered from January 2017 to September 2026 and grouped them by the year each lease began, roughly when the block was completed. Special designs such as DBSS flats, maisonettes and terraces are left out.

Median floor area of resold flats. *Few three-room flats were built in these years; these medians rest on 93 to 357 resales and are not reliable.

The early-1990s flats were the largest. Then the size fell quickly: the median four-room went from 101 sqm for leases begun in 1999 to 95 sqm in 2000 and 91 sqm in 2001; the five-room from 121 sqm to 115 sqm to 110 sqm. Both have since edged back up to 93 sqm and 113 sqm. The three-room has barely moved: 68 sqm in 1980–1984 and in 2015–2019.

So if your parents' 1990s four-room feels roomier than a new one, it probably is, by around 10 sqm. But that gap opened around 2000, not with recent BTOs.

Resale records stop around 2022, because a flat cannot be resold within its five-year minimum occupation period. For newer flats we read HDB's sales brochures: each launch's main plan, weighted by its number of flats. We hold plans for 320 BTO launches from 2008 to 2026.

Median printed floor area (including the air-con ledge), selected launch years. The years not shown read the same as their neighbours.

Mostly, no. The typical new four-room printed 93 sqm in every launch year from 2012 to 2024, and the five-room 113 sqm in every year from 2018 to 2026.

The dip to 90 sqm in 2025 and 2026 is real, but it comes from the mix of projects. HDB's own Annex A figures for launches from October 2024 to June 2026 split flats by classification:

Median floor area including the air-con ledge, weighted by flats. Internal areas: 4-room Standard 90 sqm, Plus and Prime 86 sqm.

A Standard four-room is the same size it has been for over a decade. Plus and Prime four-rooms are about 3 to 4 sqm smaller, and as they make up more of each year's launches, the median slips. HDB's figures don't say why, and we won't guess.

The service yard.

For years the HDB kitchen came with a separate service yard, a narrow space behind a door for the washing machine and drying rack. That is what Ng says is missing. Our brochure data shows when it began to go.

Share of new flats whose plan prints a separate service yard. The grouped years read the same in every year.

Three-room flats have lost it. In 2009–2019 launches, 99% of three-room flats had a separate yard. In 2021–2026 launches, none of the plans we hold prints one; they print a combined KITCHEN/UTILITY.

Four-room flats mostly keep it. In 2018–2026 launches, 97% of four-room flats, 75,159 of 77,339, had a separate yard. Only six launches in our data printed a four-room plan without one:

• Woodleigh Glen (November 2016)
• Tampines GreenGem (November 2018)
• Tampines GreenGlen (September 2019)
• Tampines GreenCrest (August 2020)
• Parc Clover @ Tengah (November 2021)
• Garden Waterfront I & II @ Tengah (November 2022)

Every four-room plan we hold from 2023 to 2026 launches prints a separate yard again. That fits HDB's own comparison with newer flats "that come with a service yard": for four-room buyers, that is still the norm. Garden Waterfront's layout is the exception, and on our data the most recent one.

No. We hold the four-room plans of 12 Tengah BTO launches, from 2019 to 2023:

Every project is "@ Tengah". Floor area as printed, including the air-con ledge.

Garden Waterfront's four-room sits mid-pack at 94 sqm, with 91 sqm inside. Ten of the twelve Tengah designs have a separate service yard; Parc Clover and Garden Waterfront don't.

That is the real story behind the video. Block 213B's buyers did not get a smaller flat than their neighbours. They got the same area, divided differently: no wall around the laundry, a wet kitchen sharing space with the washing machine, and a dry kitchen opening onto the dining area. Whether that suits you depends on how you cook and dry your clothes, which is the trade-off HDB described.

No, and we want to be plain about that.

HDB's sales brochures print the area of the whole flat, not of individual rooms. Nothing in our data measures a kitchen or a service yard in square metres, so we cannot confirm or challenge HDB's 10 sqm.

What the plans show is how the space is labelled and divided, which is why this piece talks about service yards rather than kitchen sizes.

Some practical points, as general commentary rather than advice.

Read the room labels, not just the floor area. Two four-room plans of the same size can live very differently. Look for SERVICE YARD, KITCHEN/UTILITY and DRY KITCHEN, and where the washing machine and drying rack are drawn.

Sketch your appliances onto the plan. Ng's complaints were mostly about where things go. If the plan has nowhere sensible for your fridge, better to know before selection.

Think about who uses the kitchen. An open layout suits some households well. If two of you cook together nightly, or laundry runs daily, weigh a combined layout carefully, and budget for any partitions you want. Our BTO renovation and design guide covers what to plan for.

Check the classification. HDB's figures show a Standard four-room is about 3 to 4 sqm larger than a Plus or Prime one. Our guide to BTO flat types, sizes and prices compares them.

Some limits on what we've shown.

We measure whole flats, not kitchens. A flat can keep its size while its kitchen shrinks, and our data cannot see that.

The resale medians mix towns and designs. They hold flat type constant, but are weighted by how often flats resold since 2017, not by how many were built, and stop at leases begun around 2022.

One plan stands for each launch. Where a launch printed several layouts of one type, we used its main plan.

Coverage is uneven. We hold plans for 82% of the three-, four- and five-room flats in 2008–2026 launches, but 2012–2014 brochures often printed no plans.

We checked the odd ones by eye. Twelve plans showed neither a yard nor a kitchen/utility label. The 2009–2010 ones did have a yard (the label was too small to read); the 2016 and 2018 ones genuinely did not.

What we would not hedge on: the typical new four-room BTO is not smaller than it was a decade ago, and the big cut in HDB flat sizes happened around 2000.

Two kinds of material, kept apart.

From the reporting: Ng's video and complaints, HDB's 14 October reply (including the 10 sqm figure and the 2018 standard), and the comments on HDB's post come from Mothership.

PropKaki's own analysis:

• Resale floor areas: HDB resale records registered January 2017 to September 2026; three-, four- and five-room flats by lease commencement year. Excluded: DBSS, Premium Apartment Loft, Terrace, 3Gen, Type S1 and S2, maisonettes, adjoined flats (5,483 resales).
• BTO floor plans: PropKaki's read of HDB sales brochures for 320 launches, 2008 to 2026: each launch's main plan per flat type, its printed area and room labels, weighted by flats.
• Standard, Plus and Prime sizes: HDB's Annex A floor areas for launches from October 2024 to June 2026, weighted by flats.
• Block 213B: flats by type from the same brochure's site-plan table.

The news:

• Mothership: HDB replies to YouTuber's complaints of 'tiny' Tengah BTO flat kitchen, says it's meant to be 'open-concept' & flexible, October 2026.

Official:

• HDB sales brochure, Garden Waterfront I & II @ Tengah (November 2022 BTO launch), four- and five-room floor plans.
• HDB Annex A launch tables, October 2024 to June 2026 BTO exercises.

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of HDB resale transactions, January 2017 to September 2026.
• PropKaki's database of HDB BTO sales-brochure floor plans, 2008 to 2026 launches.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by Mothership. The video, HDB's reply and the quoted comments belong to that reporting; the floor-area and floor-plan analysis, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not property, renovation or financial advice, and not an assessment of any particular flat.

Published 20 October 2026.