page_title: Storey
section_title: Idiosyncrasies
hierarchical_section_title: Storey / Numbering / Idiosyncrasies
caption_attribution_description: English: Floors buttons in the "Otis" lift of an oddly-numbered building in Salford University. From the bottom, the floors are: Basement, Lower Ground, Ground, Upper Ground, 1st, Lower 2nd and 2nd.
context_page_description: A storey or story is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people. Plurals for the word are "storeys" and "stories" for the English and English versions, respectively.
  The terms "floor", "level", or "deck" are used in a similar way, except that it is usual to talk of a "14-storey building", but "the 14th floor". The floor at ground or street level is called the "ground floor" in many places. In other places, "ground floor" and "first floor" are synonymous. The words "storey" and "floor" exclude levels of the building that are not covered by a roof, such as the terrace on the top roof of many buildings.
context_section_description: Some American high-rise buildings follow the British/European system, often out of a desire on the part of the building's architect or owners.
  An arrangement often found in high rise public housing blocks, particularly those built in the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, is that elevators would only call at half the total number of floors, or at an intermediate level between a pair of floors; for example a lift of a 24-storey building would only stop at 12 levels, with staircases used to access the "upper" or "lower" level from each intermediate landing. This halves any building costs associated with elevator shaft doors. Where the total traffic necessitates a second lift the alternate floors strategy is sometimes still applied, not only for the doorway reduction but also, provisionally upon the passengers preferring no particular floor beyond capacity, it tends toward halving the total delay imposed by the stops en-route. Sometimes, two elevators are divided so that all floors are served, but one elevator only serves odd floors and the other even, which would often be less efficient for passengers, but cheaper to install because the group control of elevators was more complex than single control.
  A few buildings in the United States and Canada have both a "first floor" (usually the main floor of the building) and a "ground floor" below it. This typically happens when both floors have street-level entrances, as is often the case for hillside buildings. In the UK, the lower of these floors would be called the "lower ground floor", while the upper would be called either the "upper ground floor" or simply the "ground floor". Multi-storey car parks which have a staggered arrangement of parking levels sometimes use a convention where there may be an "upper" and "lower" level of the same floor number, (e.g.: "1U/U1" = Upper 1st, "L2/2L" = "Lower 2nd" and so on), although the elevators will typically only serve one of the two levels, or the elevator lobby for each floor pair may be between the two levels.
  In 19th-century London, many buildings were built with the main entrance floor a metre above ground, and the floor below that being two metres below ground. This was done partly for aesthetics, and partly to allow access between the lower level and the street without going through the main floor. In this situation, the lower level is called Lower Ground, the main floor is called Upper Ground, and floors above it are numbered serially from 1. There may also be a storage floor called "Cellar" below Lower Ground.
  Sometimes, floor number 1 may be the lowest basement level; in that case the ground floor may be numbered 2 or higher. Sometimes two connected buildings (such as a store and its car park) have incongruent floor numberings, due to sloping terrain or different ceiling heights. To avoid this, shopping centres may call the main floors by names such as Upper Mall, Lower Mall & Toilet Mezzanine, with the parking floors being numbered Pn
  There are some cases, especially in shopping malls in the Philippines, that the floor numbering in the elevator does not align with the floor numbering that is created by the management. However, in order to avoid confusion from mall visitors, the usage of the management's floor numbering in advertising is more prevalent than the one posted in the elevators.
  There are some cases of odd floor numbering systems in the Philippines. In The Podium, the first basement of the expansion wing is called Lower Ground Floor, since the mall has a supermarket (shared with parking); however, its next basement is Basement 2 which serves the mall's carpark, instead of Basement 1 to continue its floor numbering. In City of Dreams Manila Carpark Building, the 4th floor of the carpark is called Upper Ground Floor although the first three parking levels are from Ground to 3rd level. The parking floor actually serves the Upper Ground Floor of the resort. Its next level is 5th level to continue with its floor numbering.
  In some instances, buildings may omit the thirteenth floor in their floor numbering becau
caption: Unusual floor numbering that reads B (basement floor), LG (lower ground floor), G, (ground floor), UG (upper ground floor), 1 (first floor), L2 (lower 2nd floor) and 2 (second floor).
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