The Rietveld Schröder House is one of those really nice sites that make an interesting visit but that are at the same time so small that you can see them quite thoroughly in one or two hours.
I went to Utrecht from Amsterdam. There is train several times an hour. From Utrecht Centraal you take tram number 8 to De Hoogstraat and walk five minutes. There you find a visitor centre in the house next to the RSH with nice books, souvenirs, bathrooms and an interesting movie about the creation of this house. You can certainly also buy tickets here but I would recommend to buy a ticket online in advance. Tickets seem less scarce then in the Villa Tugendhat in Brno that is sold out for month but it would still be a pity to travel here and find no ticket since you can visit the house only with a tour.
I found the movie and the tour very much worthwhile since you learn a lot about the creation of the house.
Normally you read that Schröder was the rich lady who paid Rietveld to build a house for her and her three kids. It seems the truth is much more complicated and more interesting: She was supposedly a kind of interior architect herself and when Rietveld presented her his first draft she didn’t like it. She had obviously a great influence on the shape of the house and on the revolutionary open space on the first floor. It seemed very much a collaboration, an exchange of ideas.
The two of them had also a lifelong liaison though both were and remained married. Nonetheless Rietveld used rooms on the ground floor for a while as his architecture office and later he lived with Schröder in the house.
It is also interesting that this was his first house that he ever built. It is by far his most famous despite the fact that after his he built and renovated hundreds of houses! I was interested to see how his other houses are since they seem not very famous. The first house that I could compare it two is just a few steps away from the RSH on the other side of the highway: When they build the house it was in the open landscape and had a lovely open view. Later they started developing plans to extend the city beyond the RSH. Since Schröder was horrified by this perspective she just bought the land and if she could not prevent her view to be marred at least she could influence what she would look at. She commissioned Rietveld to build several houses. These can be seen with short walk at the end of the tour. They are much more sober then the RSH: much more modern or Bauhaus like with white facades and big window walls. They are nice but they could be by almost any modern architect of the time. One information may be of interest: One of the houses is a dependence of the Utrecht Centraal Museum and the have tours on every last Sunday of the month. Reservation required.
There is another building by Rietveld that many may have visited without even noticing the architect: The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. But none of the later buildings has the playful character, the Mondrian like impression or the concept of the changeable spaces like the RSH. This shows for me the importance of the collaboration with Schröder.
When you are in Utrecht to see the RSH it is worth to spend there at least a day: It has a lovely compact old town centre with beautiful grachten, mainly the Oude Gracht and the Nieuwgracht. They differ significantly from the grachten in Amsterdam as they have rooms or hallways under the street level, which lead to terraces along the canals. Now they are used for offices and studios and look rather hip. It is pleasure to walk along the canals and I haven’t seen similar constructions anywhere else. If they are unique perhaps they may even have OUV? There is also a large and beautiful former town moat with parks.