298 addresses on a tree-named street grid, recorded in four sections in 1953 and 1954, with a different elementary assignment from the neighborhood it is named after.
The name reads like a compass direction bolted onto a bigger neighborhood, and that is how most search sites treat it. The land records disagree. West Vienna Woods is a separate recorded subdivision — Sections 1 through 4, put on record in 1953 and 1954, 298 addresses, all of them inside the Town of Vienna. The distinction is not academic: the elementary school assignment here is not the one next door.
There are three Vienna Woods subdivisions in the town’s records and they are not sections of one another. Vienna Woods proper runs to about 1,384 addresses across sixteen sections recorded from 1951 to 1960. West Vienna Woods is Sections 1 through 4, recorded in 1953 and 1954, at 298 addresses. East Vienna Woods is a third plat again, 164 addresses recorded between 1956 and 1958. Aggregator sites routinely collapse all three into one neighborhood profile, which is how a buyer ends up comparing a house here against sale prices from a subdivision it does not sit in. The deed book and page on the plat is the thing that settles it.
The streets read as a set — Plum, Elm, Dogwood, Oak — which is the quickest way to know you are standing inside the plat rather than beside it. The zoning is RS-10, one of the three single-unit detached districts where the Town of Vienna’s accessory living unit rules apply. The council adopted those rules on December 9, 2024, effective December 30, 2024, and they are written around attachment: the second unit has to be part of, or attached to, the principal house. As adopted, a unit at or below the smaller of 800 square feet or 40 percent of the main house can be approved administratively, a larger one up to 1,000 square feet goes to the Board of Zoning Appeals, the unit is capped at two bedrooms, each bedroom requires an additional on-site parking space, and rentals shorter than 30 days are barred. A freestanding backyard cottage is a harder question here than in some neighboring jurisdictions. Confirm the current terms with the town before you budget a project.
As of August 2026 West Vienna Woods is served by Vienna Elementary School, Thoreau Middle School and Madison High School. That elementary assignment is the practical difference between this plat and Vienna Woods proper, where the neighborhood divides between Cunningham Park and Marshall Road. The Fairfax County School Board’s comprehensive boundary plan, approved January 22, 2026 and phasing in from the 2026-27 school year, ended the split feeder pattern at Vienna and Wolftrap elementary schools, so recent write-ups of this area may describe a structure that no longer applies. Verify the address in the FCPS boundary locator before you rely on it.
The 22180 mailing area reaches well past the corporate limits, so a Vienna postmark proves nothing about which government you answer to. Here it is settled: every address in the four recorded sections sits inside the Town of Vienna. That means a town real estate tax bill in addition to the Fairfax County bill, town zoning permits for work owners often assume is unregulated — driveways, fences, patios, sport courts — and a permit path that runs through Fairfax County and the town both, with town inspections requested separately through the town’s portal. Budget drawings and time for two reviews.
West Vienna Woods sits within Vienna — that guide covers the zoning, permitting and site constraints that apply across the wider area.
Artur can confirm what applies to a specific address here — lot, zoning, association documents and school assignment — before you write an offer.
