We have a saying in English that goes like this: “Home is where the heart is.” This saying generally means that your home will always be the place where you feel the most comfortable and loved the most. I think we can all relate to this saying, even though we may live in very different types of homes.

Today we are going to look at vocabulary to describe some of the many different types of homes out there. While you look over this vocabulary, remember no matter what type of home you have – home is where the heart is.

apartment (or flat in British English) – a self-contained house inside a large building; apartments can range in size from very small (a studio apartment) to very large (a penthouse apartment)

cottage – a small country home, usually a humble house

castle – a large, usually stone home, often built in the 18th or 19th century; castles were originally used as defensive structures and homes

duplex – two houses (which often look like just one house from the outside) that are next to each other and share a center wall

Earthship – a house made of natural and recycled materials (i.e. car tires, soda bottles, etc.) and soil or earth; they often include passive solar heating and solar panels

farmhouse – the main house on a farm, where the family that works on the farm lives; farm houses can have many different styles, but they are not usually fancy or ornate

hut – a small single-story building of simple construction using materials that are commonly found in the area where the hut is built (i.e. earth/soil, sticks, hay, etc.)

log-cabin – a house originally built by pioneers or frontiersmen using solid wooden logs stacked horizontally on top of one another

row house – three or more houses that are in a row (in a row = next to each other) and each share a wall with their neighbor

stilt house – a house built on long vertical logs or stilts that raise the house up off the surface of the ground or above water

tiny house – a small house usually less than 1,000 square feet (93 meters2); often these houses are built on wheels and are mobile

villa – a large country house with a courtyard, usually found on a large piece of land or farm owned by a person with considerable money

yurt – a circular tent-like house, made of a collapsible wooden frame walls; traditionally these were nomadic houses in Asia

What does your ideal home look like? Is it one of the house-types listed above, or maybe something different? Leave a comment below describing your current or ideal home.