Living Room vs. Family Room?
Dustin on 04 22, 2007
Being a person always willing to highlight my real estate ignorance, this interesting article (and associated slideshow) from Slate on a town being built in a former cornfield outside of Philadelphia made me realize I don’t know the difference between a family room and a living room. Wikipedia says the difference is one of formality and highlights the fact that the differences are blurred for those of us who grew up in homes with only one such room. To confuse matters more, we always called our room the den, which (according to a wikipedia redirect) is the same thing as a study.
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About the Author: Dustin Luther
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5 Responses to “Living Room vs. Family Room?”
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A den is a study? Oh dear. Is an office a study? Can you have a great room AND a family room? What if there is only one of those rooms, is it a living room or family room, or is it a great room? Maybe we can start small: we all agree what constitutes a bathroom, right?
I’m not sure we can even agree on what constitutes a bathroom…
LOL, I consider myself a mega expert on baths, family rooms, studies, dens, great rooms, etc…I’m doing a post with floor plans and an historic review of how and why these names came to be and changed over time
I LOVE this topic.
Now someone tell me why everything except a tudor is called “a craftsman” around here and I’ll give you the skinny on the history of expanding and diminishing floor plans and names of rooms.
The one they tried to change was “master suite” or “master” anything, under the guise of answering the question WHOM is “THE Master”? But that one didn’t fly. Some areas did rename “family” room as it suggests residents must be “a family”. Lots of politically correct activity and discussions in the real estate business over the last 25 years.
Dustin,
Were you baiting me with the “cornfield outside Philadelphia”? Nothing excites me more than new homes built “in cornfields outside Philadelphia”.
[...] Living Room is to Parlor as Den is to Study April 23, 2007 This morning, Dustin asked for the difference between a Living Room and a Family Room. Before The Great Depression, and long before homes had attached garages, “grand” homes were often built with a “center hall”. To one side of the center hall, in the front of the home, was the “Parlor” or “Formal Living Room”. Directly opposite on the other side of the center hall was the Dining Room. In the Northeast of this Country, that was a typical “Center Hall Colonial”. The Grand Staircase was in the center hall, the Kitchen was behind the Dining Room and often separated by a “Butler’s Pantry” where the butler would stand between the Kitchen and Dining Room (hidden from view) and step out to fill water glasses and wine glasses,etc. [...]