Room names?

[MoaningMeowing]

We’ve just renovated our house.

We now have a ‘guest room’ that my Uncle keeps correcting me that it’s a spare room. And our ‘study’ is an office.

My thinking is that we have a double bed in the guest room for when guests come to stay. Once we have more DC it will become one of their bedrooms.

The study is used outside of WfH therefore it’s not just an office.

He thinks we’re being pretentious. If I wanted to be pretentious I’d rename the study the library…. I’m thinking maybe the ‘spare room’ is more of a generational term?

It's the " main spare bedroom" here

You do know @MoaningMeowing that these room names solely exist between you and the people you speak to? And there’s no placard to be decided on here?

So if you speak to anyone else other than your Uncle, you can call it what you want. And he also can accept whatever you call it, but is choosing not to.

My god, I wish I had “problems” like this.

Why can’t you each just call rooms whatever you want? How often are you talking about your house and its rooms that it’s going to be an issue? Now that you’ve finished renovating there’s not going to be a lot to say, anyway.

I think it's neither here nor there. We have a spare room. It is in fact the 'spare room' rather than the guest room because we use it as a second lounge (has tv and sofa, in addition to an en suite and bed), so it is more like an extra room, hence the spare bit. The kids use it when they want to watch different things on tv. They also use it for sleepovers and parties.

We have an office too, which is truly an office, pretty much no one uses it for anything else. It's next to the spare room, so more like a bedroom. A study to me is like a 2nd reception room on the ground floor that would have a seating area in it, which sounds more like what you have.

I like the idea of a library though! Maybe I'll start calling mine a library!

A room in my childhood home was always called the playroom even long after my sibling and I had grown up. Habits die hard.

I have this argument with my husband. I'm an estate agent and call our entrance a vestibule, he calls it a porch, he calls the lounge the living room, the utility room a wash room, our family room another living room and the hall the lobby. I just ignore him now 😂

@JacquesHarlow I believe the point is the Uncle is correcting the OP and in effect dictating what @MoaningMeowing names her own rooms in her own home. That is a problem.

OP, your house, your rooms, your names. It would be reasonable for you to kindly point this out to your Uncle. I assume you don't correct him on his 'spare room' and 'office'.

Enjoy your guest room and study! :)

Why is he even interested?

We have a guest bedroom ie a bed in a room used solely for overnight visitors. We have two ‘spare’ bedrooms ie rooms that have beds but could be used for other purposes, they’re still known by the long removed DC names, an office AND a study. His head would explode 🤣

The ‘office’ is a spare bedroom with two desks and two filing cabinets but no bed. The study has one desk and two bookcases and is downstairs.

All that matters is that we know which room we’re referring to.

I correct my DH when he calls our rooms the wrong names because he is WRONG!!! E.g. (and I know I will get shot down for this) he says 'lounge'... it's not the lounge it's the sitting room! Or - at a pinch - the living room. It is never a lounge and never EVER a 'front room'. Our spare room is usually called 'the boys' room' because it is usually used when my grandsons come to stay, but otherwise it is the spare room. The office is the office because that's where I work, but when I eventually retire it will become the study.

I remember the feeling of total alienation I felt when a childhood friend called her hall the lobby. I airily told her it was the hall, not the lobby. Took me many years of life experience to truly grasp that different people do different things.

'The lounge' always freaked me out too. Not to mention my gran calling everything the front or the back. Oh you're in the back bedroom tonight.

Personally I would insist henceforth that the rooms are given people names, just to be bloody minded..... So Gareth, Penelope, Marvin etc.... 😂
However, joking aside, I hope you realise that it's just different colloquially used names/descriptions, and it really doesn't matter. What's the expression? Not a hill I'd die on....

Unless your uncle lives with you and owns the house, he's being completely unreasonable if he's insisting on your using his preferred terms. Plenty of people have a "guest room" even if it's used for other purposes and/or guests have never come to stay, and I don't see how "spare bedroom" is any more accurate or less confusing.

You definitely need a "study", though - where else will Professor Plum assault people with a candlestick?

Is he correcting you or just not using your preferred terms? If someone corrected me about the rooms in my own house I'd be unimpressed. If they just used terms different to me I'd survive.

@GymBergerac we have got one room called X's Room. There is no X in the family ad never has been, but we know what we mean 😂

DH insists on referring to any room with a loo as 'the bathroom'. All outbuildings including the garage are 'the shed'.
Then he has the nerve to when I ask for clarification.

I'd love a billiard room.

If the room is being used it's not 'spare'.

I get ‘corrected’/banter every time I use Guest Room/Study.

He comes over at least once a week. He’s got a real bee in his bonnet about GR/S. This week I was called Mrs. Bucket. Apparently everyone ‘normal’ calls it a spare room/office.

I’ve stopped rising to it, by completely ignoring any comments he makes but I did want to be 100% that it’s not pretentious.

YABU to call a room the "lounge".

Other than your uncle being overbearing I can't see why this is much of a consideration. There are local variations and personal choice.
When I was growing up we had a living room, and a lobby; I now called those rooms the lounge and the hall.

When I was selling my house some years ago, the estate agent called our front lounge the "drawing room" on the particulars. I felt like a right plonker when people came to look round.

i like a spare room and a study. Everyone calls room’s different names, it sort of evolves. I grew up with living room but my children say other room because when they’re getting under my feet in the kitchen I tell them to go in the other room out of my way! So we have the other room and the kitchen!

I wouldn't cope with that. I think a Regina George why are you so obsessed with me would be in order. And some compassion for someone who's only way of communicating is "banter" and can't make a genuine human connection without it. You are of course correct though, ignoring/rising above is the only route. Unless you wanted to bury him under the patio/terrace/plaza as appropriate.

Your uncle sounds like a pain. Why’s he so determined to take you down a peg?
FWIW, we have a study and used to have a spare room until DP annexed it.

I’ve embraced pretentiousness and the Alexa controlled lights in the big hallway are named ‘the atrium’. No shits given 😂

The technically other reception room has lots of names depending on who’s trying to annoy who - family room, front bedroom, spare room, gaming room, library (i.e it’s got bookshelves, a games console and a day bed, it’s also got it’s fair share of crap 🙄)

Dps office is just as likely to be called a study.

I might be tempted to wind him up and call him a peasant or uncouth but you’re probably wise to rise above it.

We have a spare room, an office, hallway, and a sitting room.

Couldn’t care less about what other people call their rooms, but like the OP, I’d take exception at someone correcting me.

I did once get told off by an adult for saying loo when I was a child.