Scheveningen and Duindorp: one beach, two completely different districts

Two districts share a beach and almost nothing else.

Scheveningen was 62% Dutch by origin in 2025 with an average income of 38,900 euro per resident; Duindorp, a ten-minute walk south along the same sand, was 78% Dutch with 30,500.

Duindorp is 52% social housing.

Scheveningen is 21%.

Nobody who has lived in one would mistake it for the other.

Scheveningen

19,637 people in 2026, in 10,505 households, spread across five distinct neighbourhoods: the Badplaats along the boulevard, Oud Scheveningen behind it, the Visserijbuurt, the Vissershaven and Rijslag.

The average WOZ value in 2025 was 425,000 euro, a little above the city’s 383,000, which surprises people who assume beachfront means expensive.

It does not, uniformly: a boulevard apartment and a 1920s terrace three streets inland are different markets inside one postcode.

The village came first and the resort was bolted onto it.

The canal linking Scheveningen to The Hague was finished in 1862 and a second one reached the sea harbour in 1903.

The Kurhaus went up in 1884, burned down a year later and was rebuilt immediately in Italian Renaissance style, and in 1901 it was connected directly to the newly built Wandelhoofd Koningin Wilhelmina, the ancestor of today’s pier.

The fishing fleet is still there, now around fifteen large trawlers plus smaller boats, working out of a harbour that most visitors never walk to.

Tenure is almost exactly half and half: 49% owner-occupied, 21% corporation rental, 29% private rental.

Eighty per cent of homes are flats and 56% predate 1945.

Households average 1.8 people.

The district is a mix of retired Scheveningers, young renters priced out of the centre, and a summer population that does not appear in any of these figures.

Duindorp

Duindorp was built between 1915 and 1930 as affordable rented housing for families cleared out of the deteriorating old fishing village, and the first residents were almost without exception Scheveningers.

That origin has not worn off in a century.

At 78% Dutch by origin in 2025, against 39% across the city, it is the least internationally mixed district in The Hague by a wide margin.

5,853 residents in 2026, 2,830 households, an average household size of 2.0, and a housing stock that is 52% social rented and only 5% private rented.

The average WOZ value was 377,000 euro in 2025.

Income averaged 30,500 euro per resident, the lowest of any district in this guide.

The district fought its own council and largely lost.

Large-scale clearance of the north-western side was decided in the 1990s; the S.O.S.

Duindorp committee formed in February 1998 against the demolition of 1,100 social homes, and 600 residents marched on 15 August 1998.

Much of what stands there now is the replacement.

The New Year bonfires were the other thing Duindorp was known for.

In 2014 a stack of 30,000 pallets, fifteen metres by fifteen, was recognised by Guinness as the largest bonfire in the world.

By the end of 2018 Duindorp’s had reached 49 metres and Scheveningen’s 45, and the Scheveningen fire threw burning debris across the surrounding streets.

The city ended the competition: bonfires now need a permit and are capped at ten metres in every direction.

The national consumer fireworks ban that came into force on 1 August 2026 changes the rest of the evening too, as set out in Dutch public holidays and what is shut.

The money, and what you get for it

If you want the sea, this is the cheapest way to have it.

Scheveningen at 425,000 and Duindorp at 377,000 are both well under the Statenkwartier’s 714,000, and the Statenkwartier’s advantage is twenty minutes’ walk from the same beach.

What you give up is quiet, space and a settled residential feel.

Belgisch Park, on the northern side towards the Nieuwe Parklaan, is the exception and the one part of Scheveningen that prices like the good inland districts: 8,392 residents, 61% owner-occupied, an average WOZ of 541,000 euro in 2025 and an average income of 43,900 per resident.

It is where people go who want the Statenkwartier and cannot get it.

Rental stock in Scheveningen is heavily seasonal.

A great deal of it is let short, furnished, at holiday rates, and a twelve-month unfurnished contract is harder to find here than anywhere else on this list.

Read short-stay and temporary housing before you commit to anything described as available “until May”, and tenant rights, deposits and contracts for what a seasonal contract does and does not give you.

Estate agents in The Hague who work this district will tell you frankly which lets are year-round.

Getting about

Tram 1 and tram 9 both terminate at Scheveningen Noorderstrand at the northern end of the boulevard, tram 11 runs from Scheveningen Haven to Hollands Spoor, and tram 12 links Duindorp to Hollands Spoor.

That is four lines for two districts, which is generous, and the reason is the summer.

The Hague trams and buses has the fares.

Den Haag Centraal is fifteen to twenty minutes by tram from the boulevard.

In August, on a hot Sunday, it is longer, because everyone in the province is on the same tram.

Driving to the beach in summer is a mistake and the parking tariffs are designed to make it one.

If you live here, get the permit; the mechanics are in parking permits in The Hague.

Saturday, and the rest of the week

There is no honest way to describe Scheveningen without splitting the year.

From May to September the boulevard is one of the busiest stretches of coast in northern Europe, the beach clubs run until late, the Keizerstraat and the harbour are full, and the district belongs to visitors.

From November to March the wind comes off the water at a speed that empties the promenade, half the terraces are boarded, and it is a quiet seaside town with an enormous hotel in it.

Which of those you are buying depends entirely on the street.

Boulevard and Badplaats addresses get the noise; Oud Scheveningen, the Visserijbuurt and Duindorp barely notice it.

The full account of what is actually there, season by season, is in Scheveningen and the coast.

Duindorp’s Saturday is a village Saturday.

The Tesselsestraat has the shops, the harbour is the back garden, and the social life is family-based and closed to strangers in the way small communities usually are.

It is not hostile, but it is not a district you move into and join in a month.

If building a circle from scratch is the problem you are solving, how to actually make friends in The Hague is more use than a postcode.

The honest drawbacks

Scheveningen recorded 1,376 crimes in 2025, around 70 per thousand residents, marginally above the city’s 69.

That figure is inflated by a visitor population that does not live there, and the character of it is bike theft, pickpocketing and summer nuisance rather than anything sinister.

Duindorp, at 265 crimes and 46 per thousand, is measurably quieter than the city average.

The exception is the Strandweg on a warm public holiday.

On 1 May 2025 between one and three hundred young people gathered on the boulevard after a call on social media, riot police and mounted units cleared the seafront, and the police loudspeaker told people to leave Scheveningen immediately or force would be used.

A near-identical call went round a year later and the police pre-deployed.

A restaurant owner interviewed that night put it as plainly as anyone: every year at Scheveningen, something happens.

If you are choosing between a boulevard address and a street three rows back, that is a real part of the calculation.

Noise from the beach pavilions is the quieter version of the same complaint.

Residents of one Noorderstrand complex logged eleven noise complaints in 2024, down from twenty-eight in 2023, about the carrying bass from terrace DJ sets, and have asked for a ban on outdoor speakers and a minimum distance between year-round pavilions and homes.

The council has meanwhile backed a study into letting pavilions stand through the winter, which is a live argument rather than a settled one.

The wind is the thing people underestimate.

The coast here averages far more days at force six and above than the inland districts, which is covered with the actual measurements in the weather and the wind.

Salt air is hard on window frames, bikes and cars, and the sand gets into the house whatever you do.

The coast itself is thinner here than anywhere else in the country.

The hard sea defence along Scheveningen has been described as the weakest link in The Hague’s coastal protection, and the beach in front of it as the narrowest strip of sand in the Netherlands.

At sea levels from two metres above NAP, water comes up over the quay at the back of the Second Harbour.

That is not a reason to avoid the district, but it is the reason the dune reinforcement and boulevard works keep coming back.

For Duindorp specifically, be honest with yourself about the social fit.

A district that is 78% Dutch-origin, 52% social housing and built for one extended community is a wonderful place to be from and a slow place to arrive in.

For internationals wanting the coast without that, Belgisch Park or the Statenkwartier are the usual answers, and which district suits which life weighs them up.

Sources

• AlleCijfers, wijk Scheveningen (gemeente Den Haag): 19,637 inhabitants in 2026; 10,505 households and average household size 1.8 in 2025; origin 62% Netherlands, 18% Europe, 20% outside Europe in 2025; average WOZ value 425,000 euro in 2025; 49% owner-occupied, 21% corporation rental, 29% private rental; 80% flats and 56% built before 1945; average income 38,900 euro per resident and 47,400 euro per earner in 2024; population density 8,370 per km2; 1,376 registered crimes in 2025; buurten Scheveningen Badplaats, Rijslag, Oud Scheveningen, Visserijbuurt and Vissershaven
• AlleCijfers, wijk Duindorp: 5,853 inhabitants in 2026; 2,830 households and average household size 2.0; origin 78% Netherlands, 11% Europe, 11% outside Europe in 2025; average WOZ value 377,000 euro in 2025; 43% owner-occupied, 52% corporation rental, 5% private rental; 72% flats and 54% built before 1945; average income 30,500 euro per resident and 38,100 euro per earner in 2024; population density 6,308 per km2; 265 registered crimes in 2025, 46 per 1,000 inhabitants
• AlleCijfers, buurt Belgisch Park: 8,392 inhabitants in 2026; origin 59% Netherlands, 19% Europe, 22% outside Europe in 2025; average WOZ value 541,000 euro in 2025; 61% owner-occupied and 38% rented; 79% flats and 58% built before 1945; average income 43,900 euro per resident; 482 registered crimes in 2025
• AlleCijfers, gemeente Den Haag: 39% Dutch origin in 2025, average WOZ 383,000 euro in 2025, average income 35,200 euro per resident in 2024, 69 registered crimes per 1,000 inhabitants in 2025
• Dutch Wikipedia, Scheveningen: the canal linking Scheveningen with The Hague completed in 1862 and a second canal reaching the sea harbour in 1903; the Kurhaus built in 1884, burned down a year later and immediately rebuilt in Italian Renaissance style; the Kurhaus connected in 1901 to the newly built Wandelhoofd Koningin Wilhelmina; a fishing fleet of around fifteen large trawlers plus smaller vessels; the De Kust Gezond programme announced in July 2020 covering renovation of the North and Middle boulevards
• Dutch Wikipedia, Duindorp: built between 1915 and 1930 as affordable rented housing for families moved out of the old fishing village, the first residents almost without exception Scheveningers; large-scale clearance of the north-western side decided in the 1990s; the S.O.S. Duindorp committee formed in February 1998 against the demolition of 1,100 social homes, with a protest march of 600 residents on 15 August 1998; the 2014 bonfire of 30,000 pallets measuring fifteen metres by fifteen recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest in the world; Duindorp’s fire reaching 49 metres and Scheveningen’s 45 by 2018, with sparks causing damage, after which the municipality made bonfires permit-only with a maximum of ten by ten by ten metres
• Omroep West and NOS, 1 May 2025: between one and three hundred young people gathering on the Strandweg after a call on social media, riot police, a helicopter and mounted units deployed, and the police broadcast “Verwijder u onmiddellijk uit Scheveningen, of geweld zal worden gebruikt”; NOS reporting “Er gingen stenen, glas, stokken en waterflessen door de lucht”; a restaurant owner quoted as saying “Elk jaar op Scheveningen is er iets”; NOS reporting a near-identical social-media call a year later, with four people detained and riot, mounted and dog units deployed in advance
• 070online, 7 April 2025: residents of the Scheveningse Duyn complex on the Noorderstrand complaining of “doordringend eentonig gedreun van bastonen”, their owners’ association logging eleven noise complaints in 2024 against twenty-eight in 2023, and asking for a “verbod op het gebruik van luidsprekers in de open lucht en op discjockeys die op het terras een feestje begeleiden” plus a 150-metre minimum distance between year-round pavilions and homes. Den Haag FM, 21 February 2025, on the council majority backing a study into permanent beach pavilions
• Den Haag FM, 24 July 2024: “de harde kering langs de kust van Scheveningen de zwakste schakel vormt in de Haagse kustverdediging” and “Bij Scheveningen is nu het ‘dunste strookje strand van Nederland’ te vinden”
• Dutch Wikipedia, Haagse tram: tram lines 1 and 9 running to Scheveningen Noorderstrand, line 11 from Scheveningen Haven to Station Den Haag HS and line 12 from Duindorp to Station Den Haag HS