The main room in your house...

My gran had a 'front room' (fancy for visitors) and a living room which was also at the front but for family and close friends (piano, dining table and chairs, sideboard for hobbies and a 'press' to store things). A lounge was for posh people.

Our main room is the sitting room. I wonder if it's a regional thing, as although some people say 'lounge', and modern houses have all sorts of names such as 'family room' and 'snug', I rarely hear anyone using 'living room', yet it seems to be th most popular usage on this thread.

Aveline

We had a drawing room too. However, now we have a sitting room.
Our old English teacher told us that only hotels and airports have lounges!

I was just going to say that this was one of my mother’s favourite sayings ( delivered in the manner of Lady Grantham)!

As a child I remember my parents having a large front room which was only used at Christmas or when the minister called. No central heating in those days just coal fires so the room always smelled damp. We used a smaller room day to day referred to as the breakfast room.

The Family room is the big room that also contains the kitchen and dining area down one end of it. We call the other room the back room or entertainment room and then there is the study and the craft room which are on the first floor and the second floor. The laundry is also downstairs. The houses are a bit different in Australia. We have overhanging eaves to protect from the sun and we have made an area outside into another little room. We had a lot of children back in the day but now it is just us two so it is a bit on the big side but too hard to face downsizing.

We too have a dining room, a kitchen and a study lined with books although I have claimed this room as mine and I spend a lot of time there with my TV and computer.

Madmeg

When I was growing up my parents called the room for resting (sitting) in, the "house place". I think it is because their first house had only two rooms - one downstairs and one upstairs. The downstairs room contained the sofa (called a couch) and an easy chair, and a small table and chairs separated it from the kitchen area. So the sitting room was the house place. Later we moved to a house twice the size of the first but they still called the living room "the house place".

In the late 60s my elderly student landlady in Yorkshire referred to her one downstairs room apart from the kitchen, as the house’. It was a sitting/dining room with a fireplace. The mantelpiece always had a lot of little ornaments on it, which her budgie (often let out) liked to knock over.
Upon which she’d say, ‘What’s tha doing, tha little booger?’
(She loved him dearly).

Mine is ''the living room'' and my bedroom is ''The Snoring Place!''

I call it the living or sitting room but my DH calls it the front room although it is at the back!!

Growing up inner city, we had the front room and back kitchen.
I now have a sitting room and adjoining dining room.
My late DH, growing up in more elevated circumstances, had a morning room, sitting room and dining room.

My neighbours have what they call the ‘snug’ where the television lives, it’s very small and cosy.

Always the front room, though it’s the only one apart from the kitchen.

Brought up using the word lounge, brought up in rented accommodation. Our first home had no bathroom but a tin bath in front of the fire the second had no heating but a small Rayburn for cooking. But always a lounge.

Living room ,it’s where we listen to music or watch Tv,it has three sofas so great for a family get together .
The kitchen is what was the dining room /Kitchen and an odd little 12 foot by 9 foot room all knocked into one.Its got a sofa a table that seats twelve and my oldest friend who died last year called it the party room.
Lounge makes me cringe,like Avalon ,in our youth if we,d said the lounge we,d have been called either pretentious or chavvy.

I think this thread comes round about once every two or three years, doesn't it? Betjamin always gets quoted.

I had never come across the word 'lounge' until I was 8 and went to live in Hong Kong, there the main living room was always referred to as the 'lounge'

It was the early 1950s and I obviously asked why, what I had always known as the sitting room was called a lounge. I was told that 'lounge' was an American word. American English was the dominant version of English in Hong Kong aat the time.

Living Room.

I refer to ‘ the front’ and the’back’. In the back is the kitchen- dining room. In the front is the main living room where I sit, eat in my armchair in front of the tv. There’s another room at the back where I have my music but more often it is where I am drying the washing. I call it the garden room. At this time of year it is the sunniest room and currently my garden has the most colour. I don’t spend enough time there.

Yes my Front room is in the front of the house, be funny if it was in the back 🤣
My dining room is where the dining table is and where we would eat (when there was more of us at home) so it’s all so simple and straightforward
We never had a couch we had a settee and arm chairs or a ‘three piece’ I still have a settee
What else do we call different things?
I think a lot of different names are about location as well as ‘class’
It’s like the breakfast, dinner, tea thing I m sure a lot of that is where you come from

When I was growing up my parents called the room for resting (sitting) in, the "house place". I think it is because their first house had only two rooms - one downstairs and one upstairs. The downstairs room contained the sofa (called a couch) and an easy chair, and a small table and chairs separated it from the kitchen area. So the sitting room was the house place. Later we moved to a house twice the size of the first but they still called the living room "the house place".

We have a lounge where we sit, watch TV, read etc.
The original dining room is my art and craft room.
We eat in the playroom as that is what we had an extension built for and the name has stuck.

Love the poems of John Betjeman Sago.
That us a favourite! As a child we had ghe living rom - comfy seating , dining table ( which always had a velvety cover on ) We asked had a sitting room that was hardly used.

Our sitting room is known as the other room.

Formerly, sitting room. Now “the big room” in our flat. Sitting/dining/kitchen all in one space, not sure what else to call it.

Obviously we’re a bit boring with little or no imagination as ours is just the room. 😂

My ‘lounge’ is my best room, ie where I take my visitors to.
I’m sitting here in the DiningRoom, next to the kitchen. It also serves as a TV room. I have a comfortable arm-chair.
As you’ve guessed, I live alone .