Your House Has a Personality, Too

Think of the house you grew up in. Not what it looked like, but what it was like. Was it strict or easy-going? Warm or reserved? Did it welcome visitors or tolerate them? Did it have a sense of humour?

Most people answer these questions without hesitating. That is because houses have personalities, and some part of us has always known it.

More than style

When we talk about the character of a house, we usually mean its style. Georgian, Art Nouveau, a nineteen-seventies bungalow, a farmhouse with a sagging roof. Style matters, but it is only the surface. What I am interested in is something older and harder to pin down: the archetypal signature of a place.

A house's signature comes from everything at once. The way it sits in its landscape. The direction it faces. How light moves through it over a day. Where the heart of it is, and whether you can find it easily. What it asks of the people who live in it.

Two houses built on the same street, in the same year, by the same builder, can have completely different characters. One will feel like a grandmother. The other like a stern headmistress. You will know which is which the moment you walk in.

A few of the houses I meet most often

This is not a complete list, and houses are rarely just one thing. But these patterns come up again and again.

The Hearth House

Everything in this house turns inward, toward a centre: a stove, a kitchen table, a fireplace. It is warm, protective and a little dark. Wonderful for gathering, for nurturing, for winter. Harder for anyone who needs space to breathe.

The Lookout

Big windows, a view, perhaps a balcony or a room at the top. This house faces outward. It is full of light and possibility and can feel exhilarating. It can also feel exposed, and some women find they never quite relax in it.

The Keeper of Secrets

Corridors, turns, rooms within rooms, a cellar, an attic. This house rewards curiosity and holds a great deal. It suits women with rich inner lives. It can also swallow things, including people, if nobody is paying attention.

The Performer

Beautiful from the street and in photographs. Big entertaining rooms, smaller private ones. This house wants to be seen. Living in it can feel like being permanently on stage, unless you are a woman who genuinely enjoys the stage.

The Crooked Cottage

Nothing is quite level. Doors stick. There is a beam everyone hits their head on. It has no interest in being impressive and is fiercely, stubbornly itself. Often the happiest houses I visit are crooked ones.

We choose our houses for their kitchens and their gardens. We stay, or leave, because of their personalities.

When personalities clash

A lot of the unease women feel at home is not about clutter or colour or the wrong curtains. It is a personality clash. A woman with a strong need for solitude trying to live in a Performer house. A natural host rattling around a Keeper of Secrets. A Wanderer in a Hearth House, as I described in my introduction to the Matrix.

The good news is that a clash is not a death sentence. Once you can name it, you can work with it. A Performer house can be given one room that is utterly private. A Hearth House can be given a window seat and a view. You are not trying to change your house's personality. You are trying to find where the two of you can meet.

Getting to know your house

If you would like to begin, try describing your house as if it were a person. Write a few sentences, quickly, without editing yourself.

• How old does it feel, regardless of when it was built?
• What does it love? What does it put up with?
• How does it behave when you have been away?
• If it could say one thing to you, what would it be?

Then read back what you have written. You may find you have described the house. You may also find you have described yourself, or someone you once lived with. Both are worth knowing.

Our own house, for the record, is somewhere between a Hearth House and a Crooked Cottage, with a floorboard by the stairs that announces everyone. Lenisa considers it the finest house in Europe. I am inclined to agree.