Houses and homes are among the most frequent elements appearing in dreams, with a wide range of literal and symbolic meanings.
According to the Baseline frequencies of the Sleep and Dream Database, 47% of women’s dreams and 42% of men’s dreams include at least one architectural reference, with house, room, and home being mentioned the most often. These references are much more frequent than mentions of food and drink (14% women, 12% men), clothing (14% women, 11% men), and sexuality (4% women, 6% men). Among the vital necessities of life, the need for shelter seems to make the biggest impact on our dreaming experience. (Big Dreams, 104-105)
The frequency of houses in dreams surely reflects the large amount of time that many people spend in their homes. In literal terms, a house provides its occupants with safety, privacy, comfort, and warmth. As an enclosure built of durable materials, it separates inside from outside, domestic from public, family from stranger. For many homeowners, their house is their most valuable asset, a physical repository of their financial resources. This is why dreaming of a threat to one’s house, such as from fire or flooding, can be so disturbing. Especially in an era of rapid climate change, these kinds of worrisome house-danger dreams are likely to increase.
Dreams of houses also carry important symbolic meanings, in at least two different ways. One is the house as a symbol of family relations and childhood experiences. Dreams often cast us back into the homes we lived in as children many years ago, reminding us of how those experiences still shape and influence us today. A house can embody deep memories and formative events, both joyful and scary. What makes a house “haunted” in waking or dreaming is the uncanny presence of residents whose energies are still living even if they physically died long ago. When you dream of a childhood home, there may be a symbolic connection between something important that happened in that house and a difficult or challenging situation you are facing right now.
House dreams can also symbolize aspects of your mind and body. For instance, Carl Jung once dreamed of exploring a house with many different levels; as he descended from one floor to another, the décor changed from modern to ancient to paleolithic. Jung interpreted his dream as a symbolic portrayal of the human psyche, with modern consciousness at the “top” of the structure, and the depths of the collective unconscious at the “bottom.” Other psychologists treat house dreams as metaphors of the human body, with its various openings/orifices, its outer façade (“curb appeal”), secret inner spaces, plumbing and wiring, etc. If you have a house dream, it is worth considering how the condition of the building in the dream compares to the condition of your mind and body in waking life. Perhaps you discover the house needs maintenance or repair; maybe something especially tasty, or horribly nasty, is being cooked in the kitchen; you might find whole new rooms you have never explored before. Such dreams can use the familiar features of a house to help you better understand subtle, easily overlooked aspects of yourself.
House references in dreams can have both literal and symbolic levels of meaning, and the two levels often overlap. In American society, many people aspire to private home ownership in order to satisfy their literal need for shelter and also to mark their symbolic achievement of the “American Dream.” The common association of home ownership with the American Dream reflects an admirable striving for a good, settled, independent life. However, narrowly reducing the ideal of the American Dream to owning a private home can lead to an excessive focus on material gain and social status.
Note: this post first appeared in Psychology Today on January 6, 2025.