What the official sources actually require
Immigration’s own page states the requirement in a single sentence: accommodation provided for the FDH must be “equipped with basic facilities,” alongside “nutritious food and proper rest, including sleeping time.” The standard JTKSM-published contract for hiring a foreign domestic helper restates the same standard as a contract term — “safe and secure accommodation with basic amenities” and “reasonable and sufficient daily meals” — with a general-purpose version of the same employer contract template phrasing it as “reasonable accommodation with basic amenities in accordance with the laws, regulations, rules, national policies and directives in Malaysia.”
The richest source is the employer guide’s own narrative elaborating what “basic amenities” should mean day to day: a room that allows privacy and rest without disturbance, ideally with a door that locks while she’s resting, or curtains and partitions when no spare room is available; a proper bed, comfortable mattress, pillows, adequate bedding, curtains, and sufficient storage; and sufficient natural lighting and ventilation. On meals, the same guide is specific and non-negotiable: at least three times a day, well balanced and nutritious, at no cost to her — deducting wages for food is stated as strictly prohibited, a separate rule from the general wage-deduction framework covered in its own dedicated guide.
Why this is guidance language, not a numeric legal minimum
It’s worth being direct about what this standard isn’t: no source sets a required room size, a mandatory private room, or any other measurable figure. The employer guide’s own wording is framed as “ideally” and “it is important” — the guide itself treats a household with no spare room as an acceptable scenario, solved with curtains or partitions rather than requiring a dedicated bedroom. “Basic facilities” and “basic amenities” stay the operative phrases across every FDH-specific document found, and they remain qualitative rather than numeric.
One Act does set detailed, numeric housing standards for workers generally — but it has been checked directly and doesn’t fit this situation. Its own extent-of-application clause carves Part II’s obligations out of any City Council, Municipal Council, or Federal Territory area — exactly where most households hiring a helper are located — and nothing in its text names domestic service or a private residence as a covered category; its drafting is oriented toward centralised worker housing like plantations and construction sites, not a single helper living in a private home. That Act isn’t the accommodation standard that applies here.