Traditionally the warmest room in a home: The Hearth Room!
Hearth Rooms originate from the kitchens of old homes when kitchens were the busiest rooms in houses. Preparing food was lengthy and often required multiple family members to contribute to the process in come capacity. In kitchens was also one of the most important features in homes, the fireplace.
Origins of Hearth Rooms
Hearth Rooms originate from the kitchens of old homes when kitchens were the busiest rooms in houses. Preparing food was lengthy and often required multiple family members to contribute to the process in come capacity. In kitchens was also one of the most important features in homes, the fireplace.
Useful to know: There’s a new and strong trend in home building that includes a Hearth Room near the kitchen, as it’s been for centuries.
The fireplace in the old days
The fireplace had many purposes; it would be used to cook the food, to provide heat for the room, for lighting, and many others, but one of the most important uses was as a focal point of family life. Stories would be told, plans would be made, traditions taught, memories past down the generations and was, therefore, a great vehicle for keeping alive culture and family history.
Antique kitchens today
Since kitchens stopped needing a fireplace, although you can still find plenty of old homes with the original fireplace still featuring as a beautiful antique memory of the past, and sometimes it’s still used, it’s not needed to cook or as a source of heat or lighting.
Modern rooms with a fireplace
However, the bonding moments spent near the fireplace are still coveted and, also thanks to larger homes on average than in the past centuries, they are often happening elsewhere. Other suitable rooms in home with a fireplace are being used for building and maintaining relationships in a warm, comfortable, relaxing setting. Around a fireplace is always a great place, just think about fire-pits and how people like to hang out around a fire that is very inefficient at keeping people warm, offers limited options for cooking food, but everybody likes just as the perfect focal point around which conversations run so smoothly.
Cozy rooms with a fireplace
These rooms which create the right atmosphere and nurture relationships, especially at a family level, are an evolution of the kitchen with many purposes of the old days and hearth rooms are, in fact, typically located in close proximity to kitchens. They are the spill over rooms for those who don’t stay in the kitchen and in that sense they are perfectly to briefly entertain family, relatives and other informal guests while meals are finalized in the kitchen by the hosts.
Use of Hearth Rooms
In more practical terms, hearth rooms allow a host who is still busy preparing food in the kitchen, to be in close proximity to the guests, who otherwise inconveniently tend to gather in the kitchen and get in the way of the meal preparers. It also allows a host who wants to hang out with the guests, to run and check in the kitchen without delay or impediment.
Hearth Rooms, Family Rooms and Living Rooms
They are also great to use right after an informal meal and are just a more intimate type of family room and sometimes actually replace it in a combination of hearth room/family room. The difference between the two clearly being size and function, since a family room is designed for more people and for more uses, with a fireplace being just one of many features if present at all. A hearth room, instead, has the fireplace as an almost essential feature and the focal point of the room, for use and for design. Living Rooms instead are always much more formal and stylish, and therefore used much less than both Hearth Rooms and Family Rooms.
Keeping Rooms
Also known as Keeping Rooms, Hearth Rooms are increasingly present in modern homes following a trend that sees some older interpretation of homes and their rooms and spaces becoming more popular.
Traditional floor-plans today
After the peak in use of family rooms, maybe home owners are resurrecting some older homes’ uses and layouts. Open floor plans are still appealing, but spaces and areas which are being kept separate are coming back. Especially kitchens spilling over and into family rooms, living rooms, and other spaces are not so universally in demand as they were. The #stay-at-home induced by the pandemic certainly added value to separate areas and we’ll see the lasting effect on home design of today’s practical needs.
Did you know? Hearth Rooms were called Keeping Rooms, especially in areas like New England.
(Reason? Unknown so far, despite quite some research, we will update this article as soon as we find out. So far, the only clue would be that Hearth Rooms were called Keeping Rooms because of the important source of heat in the fireplace, therefore Keeping for Keeping Warm, but it’s not clear nor confirmed. For sure the heat was important back in the day as sometimes, during the coldest nights, Keeping Rooms would be used to sleep in, which nowadays is every kid’s fun dream like pillow fights and bedroom blanket forts!)
Sitting Furniture
Another very specific feature of Hearth Rooms, modern, but also traditional, is the presence of very comfortable sitting furniture, to go with the cozy fireplace and atmosphere of a real Keeping Room. While there could be other furniture, including some sort of table and chairs for informal dining, a real Hearth Room has sofas, couches and easy chairs typically wrapping around the room with the fireplace (or stove) as the focal point. Soft lighting, rugs or carpet, side tables, coffee tables and a little storage can also be frequently present.
Modern homes
Recently, in most modern homes, this room was absorbed into family rooms as they became so popular, inclusion of a separate hearth or keeping room is coming back, as its function cannot be fulfilled by any other room in a home just as well; family rooms are not so focused, living rooms are too formal, kitchens can’t be as cozy and comfortable. As homes become larger, and there’s more room than strictly necessary, hearth rooms appear consistently. The pandemic only makes keeping rooms more relevant and useful with some effect that is going to outlast the pandemic and be an appealing feature for a long time in the future.
Hearth Room in our Sterling Home
With spaces and rooms for all purposes, our Sterling home, once again, has space and an area dedicated to being used as a hearth room, and a very nicely, conveniently and intelligently designed one!
Perfect Hearth Room
It checks all the boxes, with its close proximity to the kitchen and to the informal dining area; that’s so great to allow family and friends waiting for a meal to be prepared and served from the kitchen, while the host can be in close contact while preparing, without the distraction of having multiple guests hanging out in the kitchen.
It also boasts a great seating arrangement and, very importantly, a nice fireplace as the perfect focal point of the room, making it a model hearth room (or keeping room).
The Fireplace
Just to show the amount of thought that was put into the design of this beautiful home, the fireplace is a clean, easy to maintain gas fueled one. There’s still a wood fireplace in the home, in the grand family room, so you don’t miss anything in this prestigious single family home.
Hearth Room with a view
The room also enjoys a beautiful view through a large bay window, to the south and towards the open space of the golf course and beautiful sunsets only made better by the elevation.
One of many fireplaces
While there are many fireplaces throughout the home, this space is perfect for use as a hearth room or keeping room, being so close and in direct view of the kitchen, boasting a nice and easy fireplace, have a great layout for sitting furniture and being sizable enough for many people, family and guests.
Perfect for socializing
It originally had a TV above the fireplace, but moving it to the great family room allows the hearth room to be true to its tradition and make the fireplace the only, real focal point…
Bay Window
The view to the West is just a bonus that is great to offer to guests and to look over the deck area. Beautiful and unimpeded views towards the golf course can be enjoyed through the bay window in the hearth room.
Modern trends favoring Hearth Room comeback
Right off the kitchen, this hearth room follows tradition and functions just like it did in the centuries, allowing to entertain guests before gathering around the table, but within easy reach of the kitchen. Warm, beautiful views, located near the heart of the home, it doesn’t surprise that modern homes like this have started incorporating such room, sometimes renaming them in more modern ways, like “flex room” or other terms considered more marketable.
Terms of availability: Rare Opportunity to Acquire such a Home
This home is offered for sale, but can also be sold on a flexible lease-option/lease-purchase or on owner finance/seller finance for the deserving buyer….
Presented by Proxima Investors of Massachusetts
Call Proxima Investors 617.999.0269 or 617.921.9265 for all the details and info about how to become the owner of this amazing home and schedule a viewing. Maybe bring your golf clubs!
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