The house I grew up in was a new council house in a village from 1955 onwards, until I left home at 18. My parents were not especially happy together (my middle class mother always spoke of her mistake in "marrying down"). I was quite happy to leave and have no found memories of the place, in fact I still have nightmares about it. Since I married, I have tried to make our various houses "homely" and caring, homes rather than just buildings for those very reasons. My mother decor was cold and austere and usually chilly blue tones, which my father hated, he came from a big working class family and craved warmth - in many forms. I visited my parents about once or twice a year since leaving home (we deliberately moved a long way away) and it was all I could do to stop myself from bolting out the door and running away each time, such bad memories and vibes in the place. I don't believe I can be the only person to feel like this about my childhood home.

My parents lived in an old large Victorian house then by father designed a new modern home which we moved into when I was about four in the mid 60's. My mum loves bright colours; pink, yellow, orange etc. My friends all say they remember our house as very modern & looking fantastic compared to theirs which were very old fashioned. I prefer period properties so my house is Victorian with very pale grey/darker grey/white colour scheme. I absolutely hate bright colours so I am the opposite to my mum's style.

My childhood home was a 100 year old terrace in South London, a two-up two downer with no inside toilet, no hot water and no central heating, When I married I moved into a lovely semi where I have remained - I love all my mod cons. It's the people who make a house a home and not what you have or haven't got in it.

I grew up in a house in London in the 1970s which backed onto a hospital. As children we used to climb a tree at the end of the garden and jump over the wall into the hospital grounds where we spend hours playing in the long grass and on the abandoned air raid shelters. We now live at the edge of a Cornish village and my children can roam across the fields and down to the beach. Not so different really.

dont think mother ever even remotely considered interior design. I recall visiting friends houses, marvelling at the colours and knick-knacks and assorted paraphenalia and deciding then, that is how I wanted my home to look. Now Im a chronic collector of clutter, wanting a different style in each room because I wont be stuck with one :D

I was lucky enough to be brought up from the age of 2 to 12 in a huge Victorian house in the Lake District, with loving parents, brother and dogs. It is still my spiritual home, nothing has ever equalled it.

I was brought up in a tiny village in the Peak District and totally surrounded by countryside. My parents bought the field behind our tiny coal miners cottage and slowly landscaped it into the most magical NGS garden full of discovery and plants as well as turning our home self sufficient. I learnt my love and knowledge of plants from them and that stunning plot but have since lived exclusively in cities with urban small yards to match. Each one has had a space outside, sometimes green, sometimes concrete, but every time I have been able to use their cuttings and my passion to turn each space greener. I love going back to visit but I've come to relish the opportunities smaller gardens give me and know I will never live somewhere like that again.

Sorry it's too long. I will write a blog post instead. Doh!

I grew up in a modest, split level house on Long Island, New York, which my parents had proudly bought new in 1950. Each level was 6 steps up from the next, zig zagging back and forth from level to level. The kitchen was very small, so my parents took out the wall between the kitchen and dining room, creating a breakfast bar with storage under and over. It was the heart of the house with my mother cooking and my brothers and I sitting at the bar, discussing the day's events. Full meals were taken at the dining table.

The slightly formal lounge was used mainly by my parents, the finished basement by the kids in the family. When I was a teenager, my father built a desk area on the top floor (also their bedroom) and installed the TV and 2 reclining chairs. It was the only TV in the house and the cramped space did not allow more than 3 people to view at the same time. Needless to say, we did not center our lives around a 50 inch screen. The house had 2 bathrooms, one ensuite to my parents' room, a unique feature in those days, 3 bedrooms and sat on 1/4 of an acre of land.

In 1980, I moved to the UK a year after marrying my husband. We bought a tiny end terrace house with a dining kitchen, tiny lounge and one bedroom. When my parents saw it on a visit, my mother tried hard to hide her tears of dismay. But it was ours and we fixed it up just the way we wanted it.

We moved to a 3 bed house in a rural location and stayed for 26 years. It was still smaller than my childhood home, but I learned that we can all live easily without clutter and gadgets as long as we have a life that's interesting and full of love. Our house was decorated in a mixture of colonial American and English country and that became my signature style.

Now we've downsized to an even more rural house, a semi, and have never been more content. We sold or gave away many possessions when we moved, but find that walking the dog or working in the garden is still more important than having that 50" screen. Life is what you make it.

it's a 4 bed 1970s bungalow in a small town where next small town is 20 miles away. our children are small and they think its so big compared to our tiny house in our city.

i remember the lovely understated built in avocado bathroom suite and my mum's floral bed spreads with matching curtains.

we had enough space in the living areas but i shared a bedroom which felt like i had no privacy. the walls seemed quite thin too.

i think we had cheap furniture when we were very young in the "back sitting room" which i always disliked. also, there was always too much pattern, patterned carpets, sofa and curtains - sometimes all in the same room!

as an adult, in contrast to my childhood home, i like clean and simple designs. i like patterns in small amounts. things can be cheap but i dont tend to like cheap looking things.

looking forward to reading more replies as this is interesting!

Ours was a mock-Tudor house filled with my parents' clutter/ornaments/'antiques' and the rest was ultra-modern (for the time) 70s style - green and orange formica kitchen, turquoise and cork-tiled cloakroom and champagne-coloured (beige!) suite in my parents' en suite with gold taps. In fact everything we cringe at now (although we did actually have plain, not patterned, carpets, albeit dark red!). My home now is a 50s house, so not stylish from the outside, but big rooms with lots of light (unlike our family home) and, as someone said above, it's my sanctuary. It's filled with my take on pared-down shabby chic with a few old pieces of furniture and no antiques, throws and cushions, soft lighting and nothing that will really date too much hopefully. I like cosy but not clutter, having been brought up in clutter!

We lived in a 3 bed semi until I was 11. Half of it faced due north, so there was a room we never ever used. Then we moved to a 4 bed, which we needed, as there were 6 kids.

I absolutely loved the second house. It didn't face any direction fully, so it got sun in most rooms at some stage. It was on a turning circle in a cul de sac, so it looked really small from the front, but had an irregularly shaped extension at the side that was completely soundproof.( My brothers could play their music really loudly and noone ever complained).

This opened out into a huge garden, which my mother made absolutely beautiful. My parents built two patios in it together and my mother built her own flower bed, using dry stone walling techniques.

My parents had lots of midcentury furniture, some of which was made by my father from a book on Swedish design. You could buy the orange sofa he made now!

There was a little gazebo in the garden which turned out to be a monk's cell, the last part of the abbey that had been there. A tree in our garden was pruned by a man who happened to have come there as an apprentice tree surgeon, and he was able to tell us that it had had a bench all the way around the inside. It fell down during Hurricane Charlie, as the front wall was leaning, but my father rebuilt it over the course of 9 years.

My mother's style is way ahead of her time; their bedroom has been duckegg blue and brown for about 20 years!