Centuries ago, if you had more than one room in your home, you would be considered wealthy and well off. Nowadays this has come to be expected (with the exception of open plan homes, but even then we expect to have different areas dedicated to what would be the kitchen, dining room or living room etc).
Rooms were being invented due to a combination of things, the main reason being the growing technology which was becoming available to us. This, however, was not the sole reason for the evolution of rooms with separate purposes. Other reasons for this were us and our changing attitudes to privacy, cleanliness and class.
Rooms are losing their specific uses, so to speak. Not everyone is able to have so many rooms used for different purposes, for example, a breakfast room, study, living room, music room etc. The trend of having different rooms for different uses came about during Victorian times, moving away from the medieval style of having one central room in which all activities took place. Now some of us seem to be moving back to Medieval living with modern open plan rooms, but a lot of new houses still have a lot of small rooms being built into them with pre-imagined uses assigned to each one. (E.g. en-suites and cloakrooms).
In a series of blogs, for the next couple of weeks, we will go on a journey through some of the most popular rooms and the history behind them.
Written by Jade Turney – Building Tectonics Ltd.