When I was a kid my parents had a house with a living room. When the basement was "finished" my mother started calling it the family room. When they enclosed the patio, she called it the den. Has done the same with every home she has had with more than one living area. No room has ever been 'formal', but the living room has always had the best furnishings. The den always has a sleeper sofa so as to double as a guest room. :)

We call our living room (not formal, but no TV and set up for solitude or conversation) the front room. It is in the front of the house but that is what we called it when I was a kid as well. Family room is the room off the kitchen with comfy couches and all the electronics. We have a room under our front stairs which is all concrete and lined with shelves. We call it the fruit room, as that is also what my family called it. We store root vegetables, preserves and miscellaneous cooking/serving stuff that doesn't get used often. We also have a "junk room" which is precisely that. It is an unfinished room in our basement that stores, you guessed it - "junk!"

My house is a Cape Cod, just like the style of house I grew up in. While my house has a living room, what really sold me on it was the family room. It is an addition as wide as the house and about 12-15 feet deep. It has lots of windows and it's where I have my tv and recliners. :) It's just off the kitchen. I do not have a formal dining room because previous owners made the living room bigger and the kitchen bigger as well. I like having a living room for my vintage furniture that had belonged to family members and having a very comfortable family room for hanging out.

Growing up we lived in a small house with two public rooms, kitchen and living room. We called the living room "the room". Friends and relatives called it the living room, but every now and then I heard parlor. No one I knew had a den, but a few had a rumpus or wreck room. When I moved to TN I heard it called front room occasionally. The family house had a basement which we called the cellar. In TN the cellar is a place to store potatoes and canned goods, and to run to when you hear the "freight train".

Lol at "wreck room". Many basements in my youth were called "rec" as in recreation rooms, but since they were full of cast offs and were strickly for kids "wreck" was apt.

Morning rooms were where the lady of the house started her day, a kind of sitting room with a desk. People are using that term again in the UK for an addition off the kitchen.

There are no stuffy rooms in my house, though they are all decorated formally according to current tastes. The tv lives in the basement in a room with a fusball table. We occasionally watch tv shows or films down there.

Our main floor has a living room, dining room, library, powder room and kitchen (separate, galley style.) All the rooms get used every day.

The basement houses a small exercise room, a patio and the game room, which has the fusball table and tv.

Hah! I just learned yesterday that Wreck for Rec is something called a Mondegreen. It is a mishearing of a word that you all unawares replace with something that seems to make sense to you. I like Wreckroom.

I am always amused when I hear Lounge on British shows. sounds like an airport

Morning rooms were rooms used exclusively in the morning when where the sun was made a difference in the use of a room. It might also be your breakfast room depending on the size of the house.

I notice people seem to have left behind "great room" I was never fond of that one.

We have 'downstairs' If pressed to the wall I would call it a family room but it is just the large front room of the basement with all the windows with the TV and the comfortable chairs. 'Upstairs' is the kitchen and the sitting area for guests.

My parents built a new home in the late 60's. We had a "formal" living room for guest's. It had my mom's organ and piano, and white carpet. Never used unless mom was playing organ/piano, or guest. It was a very large house and we had a "family room" for everday use. I currently have a living room and family room but use both daily.

I'm not sure it's necessarily a mondegreen, maybe just a homonym pair with an ambiguous meaning.

Mondegreens in song lyrics are common.

Credence Clearwater's Bad Moon Rising, some thought the lyrics were

"There's a bathroom on the right" instead of

"There's a Bad Moon on the Rise".

Fogarty likes that and now sings it both ways in live performances.

Or another easy one

Jimi Hendrix' Purple Haze - Lyrics hear to be

"Scuse me while I kiss this guy", instead of the correct way:

"Scuse me while I kiss the sky".

I grew up with a living room, which had the fireplace, stereo cabinet, and piano, and nice furniture, and “the porch”, which I guess was the family room. Family Rooms were kind of a newish concept in the 50s. Our house was designed with a screened porch, but by the time the family moved in it was enclosed, then soon after was heated. So we always called it “the porch”.

The next door neighbors had converted their garage to a great space, completely paneled with a wet bar, tv, and great storage closets for each persons games and toys. It was called the Rumpus Room.

Our current house has a living room, where we “live” (it has the tv”). The “family room“ is oddly located, and we really don’t use it. We call it “the pink room”. We really tried to call it the sun room, but it just never caught on.

Most people around here, when there is a basement living space for tv, play, etc, it’s just called “the basement”.

Our house plans quite grandly call one room the "Library". Uh-huh. It does have a wall of bookshelves, but it also has the main TV. The Living Room is where we read.

Oh my! We have a "Morning Room"! It's a room open to the kitchen that is the "Breakfast Room" on the house plans. We're there for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Just a table and chairs and a small buffet w/TV. It has French doors to a patio on the east wall, and another pair on the south wall, opening onto to a screened porch.

Our basement is home to the furnaces, water heater, central vacuum, etc. In addition to that, it's important to me (and my sinuses), to insulate the first floor from the damp earth.

When I lived in GA a room that was all windows was called the GA room. Then when I moved to FL people called them FL rooms. My aunt had a mud room. A small room to leave your shoes or coat when you walked in from the garage.

When I was growing up most homes didn't have family rooms. Some that did called them rumpus rooms.

I have an odd room that is a very badly done addition. It is all wood floor,walls,ceiling, uninsulated,with a comically low ceiling and was obviously thrown onto the house to increase the square footage for little cost. The sellers called it a sunroom,though it is not a sunroom by any stretch of the imagination. Their realtor called it a dining room. I guess because its off the kitchen? We call it "that weird wooden room." So far its uses include storing my halloween decor in the off season and housing SOs pool table,and some of my candle making stuff.

My parents struggle to settle on a name for the mother in law suite they built to house my grandmother now that she is gone. Its sometimes called "the west wing" sometimes "the guest quarters." And they have a few others that they knock back and forth.

Lucy Worsley (love her) made a documentary series about such things. "The history of the home." I think its called. Its entertaining to watch and you can find it on YouTube.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yrn42rvTlpk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NvdWc4WcYXA

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VK6mwqw0FqQ

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XtC6X7ylmZE

We have the Family Room, the Man Cave Or Frog (Family room over the garage) and a Parlor/Living Room or as my MIL Liked to call it, the over 30 room. When she wanted adult conversation without a bunch of grandkids around she would head for the over 30 room. If you weren't at least 30, you were not allowed. :-))))

I think most homes have a living room - every one we've had or lived in has.

A less formal "sitting room", also often where the TV is, has been called a "family room" if near or immediately adjoining the kitchen. It's a "den" if it's elsewhere. We've never had a TV in a living room.

Some homes these days are built or remodeled to have family rooms only and not living rooms. Also some swallow up formal dining rooms to make other use of the space. Personal choices, not ones I would like.

We mostly use our living room when we have company. I've never lived in a house with a basement.

Both my grandmothers had parlors that were off bounds when we were kids. Both lived in mid-1800's houses, both had french doors which were mostly closed and all the fancy furniture and knick-knacks were in there. I have a large living room that I probably have sat in a handful of times in the 37 years I've lived here. It has a fireplace but no TV or any electronics. I guess it's like the grandmothers' parlors. My large room off the kitchen is a keeping room which is the term they used when the house was built in 1840. It has five windows and a backstair case to what originally was the handyman's bedroom. Geeze, I wish he still was around.

We have a room...I guess it could be called a great room, though it's really an 'open concept' kitchen with a breakfast nook and a family room. We do refer to the spaces individually though even though it's all one space. Then our living room is also a library so it serves both purposes which is not to be confused with DH's study/office.

I've been watching the show Escape to the Country, and have noticed a number of things on naming rooms. They refer to bedrooms by different sizes such as a single or a double. They refer to public rooms as reception rooms and don't necessarily define them specifically as dining or living as the rooms seem to be used interchangeably depending on the owners. They don't call a den a den but a 'snug'. They seem to specify whether it's a bathroom or a shower room. An eat-in kitchen is called a 'kitchen diner' and a separate apartment is called an annexe. What really cracks me up though is when they refer to a cozy room as homely rather than homey.

Of course the amazing part is when they show a home whose main building was built in the 1600s and had a modern update in the victorian era!

My office is referred to as The Command Center.

I was thinking recently about the "front room." That's what we called the living room when I was a kid. In our house, the front room was on the back.🤪 Any idea if that was a northern thing? I grew up in Ohio. I haven't heard the term in years.

My Grandmother used the phrase "front room". She also had two and also referred to them as the inner room and the outer room. We also had a reception room which was used for persons who stopped by very briefly or especially people we did not know. They could sit there and wait until we decided whether or not to invite them into the main house. No beverages were served and there was no place to hang your coat. There was a love seat and three chairs.

My parents were both from Milwaukee, and we always said "front room" growing up. From what I remember, the sitting room with the nicest furniture was nearest the front door of the house, presumably so guests could be shown there directly without seeing the more informal areas of the house. Family & friends never used the front door.

I've had Chicago-area friends refer to the French Room, which was the more formal living room. I always thought they meant front room, but when I mentioned it they said no, it's French room, because that's what their grandmothers called it. I still think the grandmothers were misheard.

At rummage sales, the French Room has the fancier stuff: the Baccarat vases, the evening gowns, the good silverware.

Is the main difference between a living room and a family room the presence of a tv?

I grew up with a front room which I now call the living room. Same thing. This is the main room in the house. Only problem, there is no foyer so coming in the front door you enter right into the living room. We have a larger eat in kitchen so there is no dining room. Hallway off the living room leads to a bathroom on the left and 2 bedrooms, one on the right and one on the left. In the hallway is a door that leads to an attic with subfloor and old dry wall and moisture barrier covered batting ceiling with a double hung window at each end. The attic is the top story of the house with eaves at each side for more storage. One day after I am gone someone could finish the attic and make the room into bedrooms or a family room. I have a 2 room large cement wall and floor basement unfinished with lots of windows. There is also a coal room which most people around here have turned into a cold room or cellar for storing food. One side of the basement was for play growing up if we could not be outdoors and the other side was the laundry room, furnace room and my Dad's work bench area. After the last major flood I installed the new washing machine and dryer into the kitchen. My friends who lived next door to me growing up was from a family of 10 children and they were not allowed to step a foot into the living room until Christmas. They did not have a family room so like us spent most time outside or playing in the basement. My Grandparents had a huge full length of the house kitchen and off of that room there were two more rooms and one was the "summer" kitchen where my Grandfather made his head cheese and deep fried potato or corn fritters or beer battered fish. I thought it was odd having 2 kitchens. I always wanted a house with a designated library room, a craft room would be nice too haha

For a while in the 70's? 80's? I heard the term "country kitchen" for a kitchen that was open to the main eating table, with the full size table often set perpendicular to the cooking area. It was larger than an "eat in" kitchen which referred to a cooking area large enough to include a small 4-person dinette. There may or may not have been a separate formal "Dining Room." The country kitchen was close, but not entirely open to, the other living areas of the house. Does anyone else remember "country kitchen"?

As I'm recalling now, my mother's parents always called the living room, "the parlor".

Oh, I remember country kitchens, I used to swoon over them in magazines and the newer housing developments we’d tour.

(aside to Chisue and DLM if she checks in, Country Kitchen, on Central Ave. I think it hasn’t been redecorated since 1972, and I still love it. I think the waitresses’ denim jumpers have been handed down for generations, too. Our infant son’s first outing when he was just a few weeks old.)

My grandmother had a “utility room”. The house was built in 1947, and I imagine that a first-floor laundry might have been a bit unusual. Theirs was between the kitchen, garage, and back stairs, and side porch, and was a tad smaller than the two-car garage. It was big!

It housed the washer and dryer and a laundry sink, and had an area for indoor air drying.

Across the room there was a half-bath (since you’d come in via the side porch from working in the garden), and a concrete double sink (again, since you’d come in via the side porch from working in the garden!).

Near the kitchen was second refrigerator where I recall she kept the 7-Up and ingredients for Black Cows, for her visiting grandchildren. There was also plenty of floor space, and iirc it was a polished concrete floor. What a great room. So much more than a laundry room.

bpath -- Your comment about Country Kitchen could have described Cooley's Cupboard in Evanston. NU students used to make bets on how long it would take the elderly wait staff to bring an order. Then there was Stouffer's on Randolph across from Marshall Fields, where the primarily native Irish waitresses may have been older, but were also speedy. They knew how to turn a table!

I think that Front rooms were literally a household's front face (a perfection impossible in everyday life without staff).

b path -- I've heard people from the Dakotas (can never remember if it's north or south where they're from) call the "best" living area the French Room as well and someone who grew up outside of Chicago refer to it as the French Room. So I'm thinking it may have some European history background to refer to the "best" living area as The French Room. I never asked because I thought it may be a bit rude!

If you haven't read Bill Bryson's The House, you need to do so -- it explains where ALL of the rooms come from! We have a living room, dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, bedroom, sunroom and spare room plus a bath. Here the casual living area is referred to as either a den or family room -- it varies. But, alas, our house doesn't have one so I don't have to decide what to call it! Oh, and we have a front porch!

I've tried a couple of Bryson's books on a friend's recommendation and was unable to get far in either. I suspect there are those who like his style and also those who don't. He seemed pompous - as if he was certain what he wrote was both interesting and funny/entertaining and if you didn't agree, you were wrong.

Maybe this one is better.

I too have an enclosed patio/sun room that is wood paneled including the ceiling. Wondering if any of the others that have this room still have the flower boxes that lined the room. For whatever reason when it was enclosed the brick flower boxes were covered with a light padding and carpet to from benches on two sides of the room. My old insurance agent told me that the neighborhood kids would be invited to watch tv and would sit on them.

DH and I have both lived in Chicago suburbs all our lives. I've never, ever heard of a "French Room" outside of church rummage sales where the more expensive goods are in one.

It's a good thing the weather has cooled or I'd want a Black Cow (alias Root Beer Float) now. (During the Depression, my grandmother made her own root beer...with a little kick to it!)

Sitting Room is another name for Living room. I dont recall if anyone used it here.

My Other (as I like to call her) Grandmother had a Living room that we were only allowed into when we were required to dust all the furniture, whatnots. and shake out the rugs. Now if you can imagine setting your visiting grandchildren to the task of dusting (she made us dust the springs of her bed as well) during their brief visits you will understand why I as a very quiet well behaved child would go around the room rubbing my behind in each chair that I was expect to dust but not allowed to sit in.

Elmer, you kill me.

The term front room brings back memories I had forgotten. Before my parents built a brick ranch in the '50s, the old two-story house we lived in in town was long and narrow. The living room was in front and was called the front room followed by the large dining room and then kitchen and porch on the first floor. When they built the new house it was called the living room with a big stone fireplace. I had a rec room in the basement.

When I was growing up, my next-door neighbors had a room between their garage and kitchen that they called "the breezeway." It really wasn't anything special, but I always loved the name.

I had a house with a breezeway that connected the garage with the door to the kitchen. The big windows were tall on the two long sides and could convert to screen windows. We sat out there on summer evenings on chaise lounges and yes, it was breezy. In the winter it made a nice passage from the garage to the house.

I have a sewing room and a knitting room. Have an additional chair in each, hubs will join me and guess they become sitting rooms.

Knitting room. I like that. I have a Loom room.

My great-grandparents had a breezeway between their house and garage. G-grandma grew african violets in it ... they liked the light-filled space.

Next house I design, is going to have a huge utility room exactly as bpath describes it! We used to have a mudroom similarly located, but it wasn't big enough for a sink or hanging laundry.

I grew up in a Chicago apartment and it had a living room (across the hall from the dining room), which was always called the living room, not the parlor or any other term. So all my homes since then have had "living rooms". In this house we turned one of the bedrooms into a "den", which has sofas and is where we watch tv. I also never had a tv in the living room, not growing up and not in any home since.

Chisue - you mentioned the Stouffer's on Randolph and Wabash, across from Field's. That almost brought tears to my eyes! It was my mother's and my favorite restaurant after or in the midst of shopping at Field's and Carson's. We preferred the window table that faced Randolph. So very many meals there...The spinach souffle!

Sable