Leidschendam has no railway station.
That single fact sorts most people into yes or no faster than any price comparison, because everything else about the town is comfortable: 423,362 euro average WOZ in 2025, households averaging 2.11 people, 1,335 residents per square kilometre, and a 300 hectare lake at the northern edge.
What it actually is
A dam in the Vliet, built in the thirteenth century to hold apart the water levels of two different water boards, and a town that grew on the trade the obstruction created: everything moving along the canal had to be transferred from one boat to another, and somebody had to do it.
The present lock complex dates from 1885 and still works.
Of the old village itself very little survives beyond the churches and a few art nouveau shopfronts.
Eight per cent of the housing stock predates 1945, the lowest share of any of the towns around The Hague except Zoetermeer.
What you are moving into is overwhelmingly post-war: Damcentrum around the lock, then a ring of 1960s to 1990s estates, then polder.
The town lost its most unusual tenant recently.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, a United Nations court, sat here in a former intelligence service building from 2009 and closed on 31 December 2023.
It is worth knowing only because it explains why an ordinary Dutch town has a heavily secured building in it.
The money
Average WOZ value 423,362 euro in 2025, above the Den Haag figure of 383,000 and below Voorburg.
Fifty-five per cent owner-occupied, 30% corporation rental, 14% private rental, across 16,556 dwellings in 2025.
Fifty-four per cent of the stock is flats, which is a lower share than Voorburg, Rijswijk or Den Haag, and the difference is real rather than statistical: the estates here were built with rows of family houses and gardens on a scale The Hague has nowhere to put.
Household size of 2.11 follows directly from that.
Income is the one number to treat carefully.
The municipal figure for Leidschendam-Voorburg is 40,400 euro per resident in 2024, and Voorburg’s 42,702 sits above it, so Leidschendam’s sits below.
AlleCijfers publishes 28,460 euro per resident for the Leidschendam woonplaats in 2024, which is lower than the arithmetic of those two figures supports, so read it as a direction rather than a measurement.
The direction is not in doubt: this is the less wealthy half of the municipality.
Municipal charges are set by Leidschendam-Voorburg, so the Den Haag waste and sewerage rates in the cost of living article do not apply here, and neither does the Den Haag parking regime in the parking permit article.
Look both up under the right municipality before you budget.
Getting to Den Haag
By tram, well.
Line 2 runs from Kraayenstein in the far west of The Hague, through Loosduinen and past the Westeinde hospital, and terminates in Leidschendam.
Line 6 comes from Leyenburg through the Schilderswijk to Leidschendam Noord.
Line 19 links Leidschendam and Leidschenveen to Delft.
RandstadRail lines 3 and 4 call at Leidschendam-Voorburg on their way between central Den Haag and Zoetermeer.
That is four rail-based services and it is genuinely good coverage, described in full in the tram and bus article.
What it is not is a train.
Leidschendam-Voorburg station is RandstadRail, not NS, and the nearest national rail is Voorburg or Laan van NOI.
If your week involves Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Schiphol rather than the centre of The Hague, that is a change and fifteen minutes added to every journey, and the train article is worth reading before you decide it does not matter.
The A4 and the N14 both run past, and the Sijtwendetunnel opened in 2003 to take through traffic under the town.
It helped and it did not solve it: the old centre still takes a large volume of cut-through traffic, and congestion on the A4 and N14 is the standing local complaint.
Shopping, and why there is no high street
Westfield Mall of the Netherlands is in Leidschendam.
It was Leidsenhage, it reopened after a full rebuild in 2020, and by its own current count it holds 250 shops, restaurants and entertainment venues with 4,000 parking spaces.
It is the largest shopping centre in the country by several measures and people drive to it from across the Randstad.
The honest consequence is that Leidschendam does not have a high street in the way Voorburg has the Herenstraat.
It has a mall, a supermarket cluster and the small run of shops around the lock.
If browsing independent shops on a Saturday is part of what you want from a town, this is not it, and the Hague shopping streets are twenty minutes away by tram.
Water and green, which is the real argument
Vlietland sits between Leidschendam and Leiden, between the Vliet and the A4: a deep former sand quarry of two connected lakes, roughly 300 hectares of recreation area, three kilometres long and a kilometre wide, with beaches, a sailing centre and marked swimming water.
It is owned by the province and it is free to walk into.
Add Stompwijk’s polder, which is inside the municipality and is the reason the population density reads 1,335 per square kilometre against Voorburg’s 6,963.
Nowhere else this close to The Hague gives you that much open space, and it is why families who could afford Voorburg sometimes choose here instead.
Who lives there
35,718 people in 2026, in 16,505 households.
Sixty-two per cent of residents were of Dutch origin in 2025, 9.4% of European origin and 28% from outside Europe, so it is less internationally mixed than Rijswijk and noticeably less so than The Hague.
Registered crime was 56 per thousand inhabitants in 2025 against 69 for the city.
Practically, that means a smaller English-speaking network than you are used to in the city, and it is worth being deliberate about that rather than assuming it will happen: how to actually make friends in The Hague applies harder out here than it does in the centre.
The honest drawbacks
No train, a mall where a town centre would be, cut-through traffic in the old core, and estates that are perfectly pleasant and completely interchangeable.
There is also the administrative point that catches everyone: Leidschendam is not a municipality, it is half of Leidschendam-Voorburg, and every official process runs under that name.
So is it worth it
Yes, for families with a car or two good bikes and a job in The Hague itself rather than elsewhere in the Randstad.
Pound for pound it gives you more house, more garden and more open water than anything else within a tram ride of Den Haag Centraal, and the tram ride is real rather than theoretical.
No, for anyone commuting to Amsterdam or Rotterdam, anyone without a car who wants spontaneity, and anyone who would resent the mall.
Those people should look at Voorburg, or stay in the city and read which district suits which life.
Registering with estate agents across both halves of the municipality is sensible either way, because the two markets behave differently and a single agent often covers both.
Sources
- AlleCijfers, woonplaats Leidschendam (CBS and Kadaster data): 35,718 inhabitants in 2026; 16,505 households at an average of 2.11 persons; 16,556 dwellings in 2025; average WOZ value 423,362 euro in 2025; 55% owner-occupied, 30% corporation rental, 14% private rental; 54% flats; 8% built before 1945; “Het gemiddeld inkomen per inwoner in de woonplaats Leidschendam is EUR 28.460” and 31,100 euro per income recipient in 2024, with 27,700 income recipients; population density 1,335 per km2; 56 registered crimes per 1,000 inhabitants in 2025; origin 62% Netherlands, 9.4% Europe, 28% outside Europe in 2025
- AlleCijfers, gemeente Leidschendam-Voorburg: average income 40,400 euro per resident in 2024; and woonplaats Voorburg, 42,702 euro per resident in 2024, 6,963 residents per km2
- AlleCijfers, gemeente Den Haag: average WOZ 383,000 euro in 2025, 69 registered crimes per 1,000 inhabitants in 2025
- Dutch Wikipedia, Leidschendam: the thirteenth-century dam in the Vliet separating two water boards and the transhipment trade it created; the present sluice complex dating from 1885; “Van het oude dorp Leidschendam is behalve de kerken en enkele artnouveau-winkelpanden weinig” remaining; the Lebanon Tribunal housed in a former intelligence service building from 2009; tram lines 2, 3, 6 and 19 and RandstadRail at Leidschendam-Voorburg; the Sijtwendetunnel on the N14 completed in 2003, with “het oude centrum van Leidschendam nog steeds erg veel last van (sluip)verkeersoverlast” and congestion on the A4 and N14
- United Nations and UN News, December 2023: the Special Tribunal for Lebanon entered its residual phase on 1 July 2022 and formally closed on 31 December 2023, its archives transferred to the UN Archives and Records Management Section
- Westfield Mall of the Netherlands, own site, September 2026: “250 winkels, restaurants & entertainment” and “in totaal 4000 parkeerplaatsen”; the centre reopened after rebuilding in 2020, formerly Leidsenhage
- Dutch Wikipedia, Vlietland (recreatiegebied): a deep former sand quarry of two connected lakes between the Vliet and the A4, roughly 300 hectares, about three kilometres long and one kilometre wide, owned by the province of South Holland and lying in the municipality of Leidschendam-Voorburg
- Dutch Wikipedia, Haagse tram: line 2 Kraayenstein to Leidschendam, line 6 Leyenburg to Leidschendam Noord, line 19 Leidschendam and Leidschenveen to Delft; RandstadRail lines 3 and 4 between Den Haag and Zoetermeer calling at Leidschendam-Voorburg
[…] It is a short hop from Leidschendam. […]