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House in dreams: what it can mean

  • Places
  • Family

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The short answer

Houses are the most common dream settings of all. A childhood home, a strange house or a newly discovered room can say a lot about belonging, the past and parts of life you are exploring.

Your dream is not everyone's

Tell it the way you remember it. You get a reading about your dream and your life, not a dictionary entry.

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

Dream content studies code settings, and familiar indoor places, homes above all, are among the most frequent. Continuity researchers note that returning to a childhood home often comes with thoughts about family, the past, or who you were then. Discovering extra rooms is a well-known dream motif that dreamers often describe as exciting, and it is commonly read as finding space or possibility in your life. The state of the house (cosy, crumbling, flooded, crowded) is usually more telling than the house itself.

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Dream books around 1900 read a fine new house as a move to better circumstances and a ruined house as losses. We report this as folklore, not as a forecast.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. Whose house was it, and when in your life did it belong?
  2. What state was it in, and does that match how your home life feels now?
  3. Was there a room you had not seen before? What might it stand for?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Calvin S. Hall, Robert L. Van de Castle (1966). The Content Analysis of Dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: coding categories: settings (reference not yet checked)

    The standard coding system for dream content (characters, social interactions, misfortunes, emotions, settings, objects) and its normative sample.

  2. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  3. Gustavus Hindman Miller (1901). What's in a Dream (later reissued as Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted).

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: House (reference not yet checked)

    An American popular dream dictionary. Its entries are written as omens ("foretells"); we only report how people once read a symbol, never as a forecast.