How do you define a cabin?How is it different from a regular house?

29 comments

1. A cabin to me is historically these a pretty modest home, like an open floor maybe with one or two rooms. Then they made buildings modeled after those but built larger for weekend or weeklong getaways out in the woods, near a mountain or hill range, or some other less populated area.

   This would be different than something like a farmhouse which is specifically situated on a farm and might have more rooms.

2. a cabin is a small house in the woods

3. A cabin is a rural dwelling built from local natural materials.

   It’s historically a small family dwelling. But, there was an era where they became quite grand.

   So, now it could mean both a small humble family place to a huge resort building, but most likely something in between.

   The use of natural, local materials and rural location remain the only consistent traits.

4. In general cabins are in more remote areas and typically need to be self sufficient. In modern times you’ll see houses in small mountain cities called cabins even though they are hooked up to city power and this is basically a marketing technique to sell/rent vacation homes in mountain towns.

   In general when I think cabin I think a small building with

   – no electric or solar

   – wood burning fireplace and/or stove for heating

   – septic tank for sewage or an outhouse

   – water from well or local source like a stream or lake

   If you go into a tourist destination like Big Bear Lake outside of Los Angeles you will find 5 bedroom 3 bath houses with hot tubs listed as a cabin. To me this isn’t a real cabin it’s just a marketing term trying to convey that this home is located in the mountains. Similar to how you’ll see giant houses in Malibu right off the beach be called bungalows just because they are near the ocean.

5. Maybe that’s the point. A rich person calls a large house a cabin to build the character as someone out of touch with normal people.

6. These days the word has a pretty loose meaning I think. Among urban populations especially, it tends to be used to refer to any vacation home in a more rural area, especially one which is more rustic in appearance. It’s often a smaller space with fewer amenities than home, but not always. Some people (myself included) think it’s in somewhat poor taste to refer to a mansion that’s made to look like it’s made of logs as a ‘cabin’, but it’s not uncommon and I’m likely just being a curmudgeon.

   ETA: if it’s clear that the word is being used in its historical context, I envision a single room home constructed of readily available local materials. However, I absolutely don’t think this is the most common usage any longer.

7. If you’re scared of getting bitten by something supernatural at night, then it’s a cabin.

8. Well a log cabin is usually built to blend in with the local rustic environment. Huge open floors and tall ceilings.

   It can be small or big.

9. A house that’s located in a semi rural/rural area that is not your primary residence

10. You don’t live in a cabin. You stay in a cabin for a temporary amount of time. So a cabin is expected to have fewer amenities than a house.

11. Honestly in the 21st century a “cabin” is basically just a vacation home in a rural location, especially on a lake or in the woods. The dimensions and style don’t really matter.

    Heck, you could have two identical houses right next to each other, and one could be a cabin and not the other purely on the basis of being a primary residence or not.

12. A small home, on or near a lake.

    My parents own a cabin, which, coincidentally, is located about halfway between where I live in Thunder Bay (Canada) and where the rest of my family live in the Minneapolis suburbs. They bought it in 1999 when my sister and I were kids. It’s got two small bedrooms, a decent-sized living room, a bathroom, and a small combined kitchen/dining. Along with, of course, a porch/patio area. It can comfortably host five or six people.

    We used to take family trips up there all the time. More weekends than not in the summer. Now we commonly use it as a get-together spot. It takes us both about 2-2.5 hours to get there.

13. A cabin will generally be made of wood/stone in a wooded area – could also be next to a lake/river in someplace like the north woods of WI or MI.

    What makes it different from a regular house is that it is more isolated, rustic and in a more rugged area.

14. There’s definitely jokes in TV when someone calls something a cabin nonchalantly and it turns out to be luxurious. And there is the opposite joke, when the character refers to it as a cozy cabin and the joke will be it is very rustic and uncomfortable.

15. The dictionary definition is ” a small one story home of simple construction. ”

    Cabins were built mostly by the people who lived in them, maybe with some help from their neighbors if they had any. They were of simple construction because materials were pretty much limited to the trees that they could cut down, one axe stroke at a time. A cabin took a tremendous amount of work to build, and if it wasn’t ready before winter you had quite a problem.

16. A cabin is generally modest and rustic. We usually think of them as being made from wood, especially logs, but I guess you could call a small brick house a cabin.

    They’re usually for people who want to do camping-lite (ie some outdoorsyness but still with walls and a proper bed) or sometimes for people who want to vacation with a historical/frontier/rustic feel.

    If you just say lake house, I would call that either a lake house or cottage, though that may be regional.

17. My cabin was not winterized until the 80’s.

    Had an out house.

    Would not be comfortable to live in year round.

18. To me, a cabin means a smaller house in a much more rural area, where you go to visit on vacation.

19. For us? It’s a small 2 bed, 1 bath we have in our favorite getaway spot in the mountains. It has water and electricity, and the added luxury of a 10 gallon water heater. It’s comfortable for a few days to a week or so.

20. Depends how rich you are, a cabin to me is one room building usually made of logs. It has a small fire place, it may have rustic furniture. Others are a house just more rustic than the average home, these have running water, plumbing. A billionaire probably calls their mansion on a lake a cabin.

21. Cabin to me is an isolated home, preferably open-floor, in a rustic setting: woods, lakeside, etc.

    My family used to have a cabin in the mountains somewhere around Somerset, PA when I was little. Big, ugly building, I think it was a converted barn. The ground floor was a big, open floor with a kitchen and a living room. The upstairs was an open floor with eight beds separated from each other by a 4 foot divider wall. It looked like a stereotypical orphanage bedroom in a movie where they’re trying to really show this place is poor, cramped, and unkempt. You could look outside through the spaces between the wooden boards that were the only things that made up the wall. The bathroom was an outhouse on the other side of the lot. You’d walk outside in the morning and, unfailingly, there were deer eating grass right next to the stairs leading to the door. Closest neighbor was six miles away and lived in an RV with dry-rotted tires. I *distinctly* remember he had a pet raccoon.

22. In Minnesota, “cabin” can refer to any lake home, especially if it isn’t a primary residence. Usually they would be smaller than your primary residence. But if you have a huge house, your cabin might be bigger than the average person’s home.

23. They’re the places where presidents are born.

24. For average city folk, a cabin is any size house that is either made of logs or has log siding. For rural folks, it’s usually a smaller dwelling made of any materials, typically in a forest, and used for hunting or recreation.

25. A cabin is usually defined as a smaller home (often a second home), usually made of wood, in a natural place, like the lake or mountains.

    Rich people will call their large second homes ‘cabins’ when really they’re just large houses, sort of like aristocrats used to call mansions in the country their ‘cottages.’

26. A cabin is my mind is a second home in the woods/rural area.

    If it is your home, it is the place you regularly live. The place you send your mail to.

27. It’s in the woods

28. It’s much smaller than the house you live in and several hours away. I’ve seen 5 bedroom houses called cabins.

29. It is a small rural or wilderness building, for temporary lodging. It is often thought of as being built of bare logs because of an earlier style, but I think one built of wood split into planks can be called that. It is I think a one room building.

    Owning a cabin means owning a place to take wilderness vacations.