While houses and homes both refer to places where people live, they have different meanings and connotations.

A house is a building that is used for shelter and protection for an individual or a family, while a home, while a home reflects the individual's sense of belonging and comfort. A building can be both a house and a home, but a house can be bought, sold, or rented, while a home cannot. "Home" also has a sense of permanence, whereas "house" does not. When someone buys a house, something more is involved in making it a home.

A house is a building made for people to live in, while a home is one in which an individual feels at ease, safe, and emotionally attached. Usually, when we think about a home, we're referring to a building, but a home might also be a part of a building, such as an apartment, but it might also be something larger, like a neighborhood or a town. People often think of home as where they grew up, even decades after moving from there.

"A house is made with walls and beams. A home is built with love and dreams." -- Henry Van Dyke

Houses are constructed in various configurations that names have been assigned to. Primary divisions include free-standing or single-family detached homes and various types of multi-family residences.

House construction can be defined by layout, with single-pile layouts being one room deep. However, they might be more than one room wide, and double-pile houses are two rooms deep.

Huts are simple constructions, usually one room and one floor. However, the design and materials will vary according to the location.

Bungalows are low one-story houses with a shallow-pitched roof. A bungalow might also be described as a cottage or simply as a small house.

Cottages are also small houses, although they may have two floors. They might also be known as cabins, camps, or chalets. A Cape Cod-style house is a cottage, as is the Russian Dacha or Isba.

A ranch-style house is a one-story, low to the ground, with a low-pitched roof, usually rectangular, L-shaped, or U-shaped, with overhanging eaves. First appearing in the United States in the 1920s, it became popular in the post-war 1940s suburbs. Tract housing built during this time used ranch-style architecture.

An I-house is a two or three-story house that is one room deep with a double-pen, hall-parlor, or saddlebag layout. This style of architecture has been popular in the United States from the colonial period onward, although the name was coined in the 1930s. It might also be known as the Plantation Plain style.

Gablefront houses are named for their characteristic gable roofs that face the street or avenue. A gable is the triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. Although this remains a popular architectural style, they were built in large numbers in the United States between the early 1800s and 1920. A-frames and chalets are gablefront houses.

Built in large numbers during the 1950s and 1960s, split-level houses have two nearly equal sections on two different levels, with a short stairway in the corridor connecting them. They may also be known as bi-level or tri-level homes.

Tower houses are compact houses of two or more stories and are often fortified and made of stone. Popular during the Middle Ages, they were built for defensive purposes and habitation. Although houses are still built in this style occasionally, these are primarily historic structures still in use in the United Kingdom and Europe.

A longhouse is usually a historic structure built for family groups. Built from timber, longhouses represent one of the earliest permanent structures in many cultures, including some of the indigenous people in the Americas.

Housebarns are buildings that are a combination of a house and a barn under the same roof, often with space for livestock. Housebarns were often built in cold-weather agricultural areas to avoid having to go outdoors during inclement weather, particularly in the winter. In some cases, the residential portion of the house is on one end, while the livestock habitation is on the other, with space for feed, tools, and other necessities in between. Another style has the residential portion of the building on the second floor.

Other types of houses include castles, chattels, converted barns, courtyard houses, earth-sheltered houses, houseboats, igloos, log homes, mansions, octagon houses, palaces, plank houses, prefabricated homes, stilt houses, tents, townhouses, tree houses, travel trailers, villas, and yurts.

In recent years, the tiny house movement is an architectural and social movement that encourages downsizing living spaces to the smallest extent tolerable. These dwellings may differ radically in style and construction. Many of them are built on wheels, not only for mobility but to circumvent building regulations that might otherwise not permit them.

Categories

Recommended Resources

Search for House & Home on Google or Bing