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Somewhat unrelated, but I'm always surprised by the fact that most american homes have the front door open directly to the living room. In most European houses
by dirktheman 10y ago
Somewhat unrelated, but I'm always surprised by the fact that most american homes have the front door open directly to the living room. In most European houses there's usually a hallway behind the front door. It acts as a thermal buffer and you have space for a coat rack and shoe cabinet.
- galfarragem 10y ago> most american homes have the front door open directly to the living room. Adding some info: in South America (Brazil at least) front door opens also to the living room. On architectural theory it's common to correlate this trend with the 'less hierarchical' way of being of these countries. In Europe this hardly ever happen and in cold countries is even common to have 2 halls behind the front door on single houses: the first not heated (the ganek in Polish) and then another hall, this one heated.
- paganel 10y ago> Somewhat unrelated, but I'm always surprised by the fact that most american homes have the front door open directly to the living room. The "direct access into the living room"-thing got imported over here in Eastern Europe (well, Romania, from where I'm from) in a lot of new residential apartments. Which is quite unusual, because now you're watching TV and doing all your housy stuff in the same room as your dirty shoes. This is more noticeable in winter, when there's all that slush on our city streets which you're bringing into your home.
- dirktheman 10y agoI know, we have the whole hallway filled with wet shoes and jackets... In warmer climates a hallway isn't a necessity, but there are a lot of areas in the US that get much, much more snow than here in Europe. Weird...
- dsr_ 10y agoA lot of American single-family houses have three doors (or more): the "front door", which may never be used; the side door, which leads to a "mud room" for taking off boots and hanging up coats, which is used all the time, and the rear door, used for access to the back yard. In the South the front door is used much more often, because it gets hot, not so much cold.
- vinay427 10y agoPersonal anecdote: growing up, the only time I used the front door was to speak to visitors and guests who rang the doorbell. My family and I never came home and used it to enter the house.
- et-al 10y agoAgreed. The side door, or door leading to the garage, is probably the most used exterior door in an American home. And ideally that's where a mudroom would be.
- alistoriv 10y agoMy house doesn't even have a side door, our front door opens into a little section of tile that's sectioned off from the living room and a hallway.
- dirktheman 10y agoThat makes sense! Most Dutch houses are terraced (so no side doors) and have an enclosed back garden. I liked the visual guide to American house styles! I can imagine a same sort of guide to European housing. Dutch, German, French or UK housing developments are usually quite easy to distuinghuish from each other, even when they're from the same period.
- augustk 10y agoIt's convenient if you want to shoot a sitcom.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoI wouldn't say most American homes the front door opens to the living room, at least not in the Northeast where I'm from. Most have either hallways, like you described as European (usually called a mudroom or entrance-way), or side doors that are exclusively used. Even most apartments have a little entrance-way area for shoes and coats, if not a full room. The only time I ever lived in a home that opens directly into the living room was when I lived in a super shitty apartment and everything about that apartment made no sense. Don't take what you see on TV as a typical American home, those are sound stages that are laid out to be most convenient to film.