List of house types
This is a list of house types. Houses can be built in a large variety of configurations. A basic division is between free-standing or single-family detached homes and various types of attached or multi-family residential dwellings. Both may vary greatly in scale and the amount of accommodation provided.
By layout
Hut
A Hut is a primitive dwelling, usually one room and one story in height. The design and materials of huts vary widely around the world.Bungalow
Bungalow is a common term applied to a low one-story house with a shallow-pitched roof.Cottage
A Cottage is a small house, usually one story in height, although the term is sometimes applied to larger structures.Ranch
A Ranch-style house or Rambler is one-story, low to the ground, with a low-pitched roof, usually rectangular, L- or U-shaped with deep overhanging eaves Ranch styles include:- California ranch: the "original" ranch style, developed in the United States in the early 20th century, before World War II
- Tract ranch: a post-World War II style of ranch that was smaller and less ornate than the original, mass-produced in housing developments, usually without basements
- Suburban ranch: a modern style of ranch that retains many of the characteristics of the original but is larger, with modern amenities
I-house
- New England I-house: characterized by a central chimney
- Pennsylvania I-house: characterized by internal gable-end chimneys at the interior of either side of the house
- Southern I-house: characterized by external gable-end chimneys on the exterior of either side of the house
Gablefront
- A-frame: so-called because the steep roofline, reaching to or near the ground, makes the gable ends resemble a capital letter A.
- Chalet: a gablefront house built into a mountainside with a wide sloping roof
- Charleston single house: originating in Charleston, South Carolina, a narrow house with its shoulder to the street and front door on the side.
Split-level
- Bi-level, split-entry, or raised ranch
- Tri-level, quad-level,quintlevel etc
Tower
- Irish tower houses were often surrounded by defensive walls called bawns
- Kulla: an Albanian tower house
- Peel tower or Pele tower: fortified tower houses in England and Scotland used as keeps or houses
- Vainakh tower: a tower house found in Chechenya and Ingushetia that reached up to four stories tall and were used for residential or military purposes, or both
- Welsh tower houses''': built mostly in the 14th and 15th centuries
Longhouse
- Geestharden house: one of the three basic house types in Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany
- * Uthland-Frisian house: a sub type of Geestharden house of northwest Germany and Denmark
Housebarn
- Barndominium: a type of house that includes living space attached to either a workshop or a barn, typically for horses, or a large vehicle such as a recreational vehicle or a large recreational boat
- Byre-dwelling: farmhouse with people and livestock under one roof
- Connected farm: type of farmhouse common in New England
- Frutighaus: a type of barnhouse originating in the Frutigland region of Switzerland.
Other house types
- Courtyard house
- * Siheyuan: a type of courtyard house found in China
- Snout house: a house with the garage door being the closest part of the dwelling to the street.
- Octagon house: a house of symmetrical octagonal floor plan, popularized briefly during the 19th century by Orson Squire Fowler
- Stilt house: is a house built on stilts above a body of water or the ground (usually in swampy areas prone to flooding.
By construction method or materials
- Airey house: a type of low-cost house that was developed in the United Kingdom during the 1940s by Sir Edwin Airey, and then widely constructed between 1945 and 1960 to provide housing for soldiers, sailors, and airmen who had returned home from World War II. These are recognizable by their precast concrete columns and by their walls made of precast "ship-lap" concrete panels.
- Assam-type House: an earthquake-resistant house type commonly found in the northeastern states of India
- Bastle house: a fortified farmhouse found in England and Scotland
- Castle: primarily a defensive structure/dwelling built during the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, and also during the 18th century and the 19th century.
- Converted barn: an old barn converted into a house or other use.
- Earth sheltered: houses using dirt piled against it exterior walls for thermal mass, which reduces heat flow into or out of the house, maintaining a more steady indoor temperature
- * Pit-house: a prehistoric house type used on many continents and of many styles, partially sunken into the ground.
- * Rammed earth
- * Sod house
- * Souterrain: an earthen dwelling typically deriving from Neolithic Age or Bronze Age times.
- * Underground home: a type of dwelling dug and constructed underground. Ex. A Rammed-Earth Style House
- * Yaodong: a dugout used as an abode or shelter in northern China, especially on the Loess Plateau
- Igloo: an Inuit, Yup'ik, and Aleut seasonal or emergency shelter that was made of knife-sliced blocks of packed snow and/or ice in the Arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberian Russia.
- Kit house: a type of pre-fabricated house made of pre-cut, numbered pieces of lumber.
- * Sears Catalog Home: an owner-built "kit" houses that were sold by the Sears, Roebuck and Co. corporation via catalog orders from 1906 to 1940.
- Laneway house: a type of Canadian house that is constructed behind a normal single-family home that opens onto a back lane
- Log home, Log cabin: a house built by American, Canadian, and Russian frontiersmen and their families which was built of solid, unsquared wooden logs and later as a well crafted style of dwelling
- Plank house: a general term for houses built using planks in a variety of ways
- Pole house: a timber house in which a set of vertical poles carry the load of all of its suspended floors and roof, allowing all of its walls to be non-load-bearing.
- Prefabricated house: a house whose main structural sections were manufactured in a factory, and then transported to their final building site to be assembled upon a concrete foundation, which had to be poured locally.
- * Manufactured house: a prefabricated house that is assembled on the permanent site on which it will sit.
- *Modular home: a prefabricated house that consists of repeated sections called modules.
- * Lustron house: a type of prefabricated house
- Stilt houses or Pile dwellings: houses raised on stilts over the surface of the soil or a body of water.
- Tree house: a house built among the branches or around the trunk of one or more mature trees and does not rest on the ground.
- Upper Lusatian house or Umgebinde: combined log and timber frame construction in Germany-Czech Republic-Poland region
- Wimpey no-fines house: a low-cost semi-attached or terraced houses built in the United Kingdom from the 1940s onwards using concrete without fine aggregates
Single-family attached
- Two-family or duplex: two living units, either attached side-by-side and sharing a common wall or stacked one atop the other
- Three-family or triplex: three living units, either attached side-by-side and sharing common walls, or stacked
- Four-family or quadplex or quad: four living units, typically with two units on the first floor and two on the second, or side-by-side
- Townhouse, terraced house, or rowhouse: common terms for single-family attached housing, whose precise meaning varies by location, often connotating a series of living units arranged side-by-side sharing common walls
- * Linked house: side-by-side attached houses that appear detached above-ground but are attached at the foundation below-ground
- *Linked semi-detached: side-by-side attached houses with garages in between them, sharing basement and garage walls
- *Mews property: an urban stable-block that has often been converted into residential properties. The houses may have been converted into ground floor garages with a small flat above which used to house the ostler or just a garage with no living quarters.
- *Patio house: townhouses that share a patio
- Weavers' cottage: townhouses with attached workshops for weavers
Movable dwellings
- Chattel house: a small wooden house occupied by working-class people on Barbados. Originally relocatable; personal chattel rather than fixed real property.
- Mobile home, park home, or trailer home: a prefabricated house that is manufactured off-site and moved by trailer to its final location
- Recreational vehicle or RV: a motor vehicle or trailer that can be used for habitation
- * Travel trailer, camper or caravan: a trailer designed to be used as a residence, which must be towed regularly by a vehicle and cannot move under its own power
- * Tiny house: a trailer, often or smaller, built to look like a small house and suitable for long-term habitation
- Houseboat includes float houses: a boat designed to be primarily used as a residence
- Tent: a temporary, movable dwelling usually constructed with fabric covering a frame of lightweight wood or other locally-available material
- *Tipi: a conical tent originating in North America
- *Yurt: a round tent with a conical roof originating in Central Asia