If you live in a pretty house, does it make you happy?

[beatricequimby]

DD pointed out a lovely country cottage on our way to school today, roses round the door type of place. Apparently she is going to live there when she is grown-up.

We live in a 1950s pebble-dash semi and will probably be here for years. I like it on the inside but it is not pretty from the outside and is never really going to be. I do wonder what it would be like to live in a really pretty house. Does it make you happy, or do you just forgot about what it looks like from the outside?

My experience was like LaurieFairyCake - we used to rent a beautiful quaint little place by the river, and it was cold, damp and permanently rat-infested, despite the best efforts of us and our lovely landlord.

Now we live in an apartment in a dull modernish block and it's cosy, pretty inside and has a great view.

Ideally I'd love to have a nice-looking place, but really so long as you're inside looking out, you don't see the exterior. We live in the ugliest place on the street, so our view is much nice than our prettier-looking neighbours!

I live here - we moved from a chocolate box thatched cottage with roses around the door. It was beautiful but I love living where we live now so much more because the house is designed for us and fits our lifestyle.

We have just bought a house based on its exterior prettiness (and location). It is not pretty inside & won't be for several years.

Laurie I'm well jel!!! Waitmonkeys I'm even more jel thats a stunner i'll stop talking like my 10 year old now

Your houses sound fab. I bet they are the sort of houses I love at Christmas with big Christmas trees in the windows.
Waitmonkeys looks amazing.
Pagwatch I will tell my daughter that one day she maybe will live in the cottage she covets. In the meantime, she and I are trying to make our gravelled over front garden into a cottage garden so at least the view outside will be nicer.

I grew up in a beautiful house and am in the process of moving out. I feel myself relaxing just setting foot on the drive - when I can see it, I feel happy. It is my background on my phone.

It also makes me feel guilty, though, because people see the nice house and make assumptions about me. So yes, it makes me feel happy, but I do sometimes underplay it so I don't seem smug (which rather takes the edge off it).

I would love a big old fashioned pretty house with coal fires and entrance gates and some Narnia lamp posts. In a few years When we move that's what I want. I remember seeing a picture of a mners house on here a couple of years ago and It was gorgeous, I wish I could remember whose house it was.

Doh Just remembered, it was Pagwatches house.

Mine isn't particularly pretty from the outside but the inside is great, and the location more than makes up for the 'prettiness factor' - stunning views in all directions.

Our house in Norway was absolutely fab. It was detached, end of the road so next to a stream and the woods.
It had underfloor heating all over the ground floor. 4 bedrooms, two big bathrooms, 3 storage rooms. Large open plan living room and kitchen with large panoramic windows covering 300 degrees, views of mountains and the sea, balcony going around the front and side of the house, wooden flooring throughout. Working wood burner in the living room. A study with large windows for me. A larder. Plenty of space for that big Christmas tree in the window. Nearly 3000sf. A garage for the car with a roof terrace. Large garden.

It did not make me happy because life was really difficult. If life was great, then I am sure the house would have been just another thing to make life pleasant.

My house is not pretty but it is very handsome! Edwardian detached with big curved bays on the front and, yes, it makes me happy but it is the outside , the inside and the family as a whole package.

When I was a child my parents used to take us out to Blackpool as a treat once each summer and we must have driven past this house so many times, never dreaming that I would one day live here.

I'm itching to put up the christmas tree in this house. It has the picture perfect Victorian Bay windows for the tree to sit in, only downside is we'll have to get a bloody big tree as the ceiling height is 3m. Damn!
We have got millions of pine cones, loads of Holly and mistletoe in the garden for free though.

My house is pretty, it is very old and quirky. It is not an important or imposing house but it is terribly interesting. The garden is something we are both passionate about too.

I don't take it for granted at all, I take pleasure in it every time I look at it. It is comfortable to live in and clutter free. Woodburners keep it warm and there are no massive windows to let in the draughts. It is a trifle dark in some of the downstairs rooms though.

I've lived in a house so beautiful people would stop to stare - felt like living in a fucking fishbowl! :( I even had people knock to ask if they could come in and look around.

I grew up in a big old victorian detatched house. Loads of rooms, hidey spaces, 'secret rooms', bannisters that went on and on (for the sliding down on), a massive garden with allsorts of fruit and veg and an small orchard...

I grew up anxious and depressed. Ho hum.

I now live in a small flat in a fantastic location. Its a mid 20C monstrosity from the outside and the inside could do with some tlc but its all mine (and DHs).

Our house is stunning. When we were teenagers DH and I stood at the gate, and said "can you imagine living in a house like that". Four years ago (thirty years on) we bought it. Every time I walk up the drive, it catches my breath. We have to sell it now because we've had to move for work.

We live in a sprawling 60s bungalow but have the luxury of looking out over beautiful medieval houses/cottages...

It's not what you live in - it's what you look out on !!!!

Our house is pretty IMO. It is a Victorian mid-terrace, but cream in colour and is 'quaint' and has a climbing rose up the side of the door. It does make me happy. I feel proud every time I walk up the path. I quite often go out and stand on the road and look at it, especially when doing something new to the garden.

I don't really care about the outside of a house, I live in a block of flats, what is really crucial for me is that the inside is beautiful and decorated exactly how I like it, and full of beautiful things. It is hugely important to me that I love my surroundings, and I see the inside of my house, not the outside.

I grew up in a huge Hall which had been a monastery in 1066 and had monks buried under the dining room floor. I hated being there on my own............. My current house is Edwardian with a huge bay window and a 1980's extension. It is lovely and I am never afraid to be there on my own!

Spacious, Edwardian house that we have spent too much money making beautiful inside and out in a very nice village which I hate. It makes me happy when I approach it but my heart sinks when I enter it after the school run because I know I shan't speak to another soul until time to pick up DC.

Would love to relocate to a city.

We own (although dont live in as we are abroad, but did used to live in) a (handsome, as these things go) new build which is in a great location and which perfectly fits our requirements in terms of lots of space, large rooms, good layout, warm and easy to maintain. I just don't like it; we bought it knowing that it was the practical option. It was a head over heart decision, and it has never grown on me like I hoped it would. I've put loads of time and effort into the interior, but I fear that it is a lost cause. I just cannot get past the dull new buildness of it all. I don't get that warm "coming home" feeling, and I don't especially like entertaining there.

I grew up in a beautiful (not grand, just very pretty) 400 year old house in the country. I love going back there to see my parents. Never again will I buy a house that I don't love from the outside, I'd rather compromise on the inside.

I would love to live in a monastery where monks were buried under the dining room

I would always choose the picturesque over the practical though.