My aunt and uncle had a room they called a Florida Room in their suburban Cleveland house. Other than a big skylight and sliding glass doors to the patio, there was nothing to differentiate it from any other room in the house. It was used year-round as a den/dining/entertainment room, and it didn’t have any sort of tropical decor. I’m pretty sure they didn’t make up the name. I think was called that because it just had a lot of light.
Ah, sounds like someone I used to date.
Foxy40, how often if ever do you have to replace the screens? Are they the same material and do they wear about the same as those on home windows?
Funny that none of these Floridians are willing to admit the true purpose of their Gator-Guards! 
Actually its a snow bird barrier.
Not offered as a statement of fact, just of my own observation having grown up in south Florida:
Florida Room ™ seems to have come into usage about the same time as air conditioning. Originally Florida houses were designed to allow air movement throughout, meaning no completely interior rooms (all or almost all rooms have at least one outside wall) and lots of openable windows. Houses also typically had porches, sometimes screened, sometimes not, or both in different locations around the house. Porches were not then much different from interior rooms, except that they were exposed to blowing rain.
The advent of air conditioning, popularized after WW2, helped to cause the Florida land boom of the 1950s. There was a market for housing within the budget of GIs making their first homes, meaning smaller tract homes of the cookie cutter style. A/C was a much desired but expensive amenity, and there was an economic impetus to limiting its application. And so developed the Florida ranch style house with a spread out floor plan allowing every room to have its own windows, so ventilation could be achieved and the A/C shut off whenever conditions allowed.
But this larger footprint mitigated against the original model of wrap-around porches, as this would add significant expense. So these tract houses were built with a simple porch, usually in the rear effectively sticking out around the back door, and these porches were often screened to be acceptable living area given Florida’s bugs.
However, unlike a wrap-around porch where a person could move around to occupy the lee side and be protected from the rain, a single porch stuck on the back of a building is open to the rain on three of its four sides, meaning that it cannot be occupied in the rain at all. So many homeowners made their first home improvement project the enclosing of their screen porch. This usually meant a low wall, perhaps 30 inches or so, and crank open windows (especially jalousie windows) up to the ceiling. But since the installed A/C unit could never handle the additional load, this now-room was not ducted into the A/C system. It remained a porch-like area during good weather, with the ability to be closed up during inclement weather.
This area was no longer simply a porch or patio. It likely contained casual furniture suitable for outdoors or poolside, as differentiated from typical interior house furniture. The room didn’t have a specific use. And being at first primarily an impromptu creation, it didn’t have a name either. It was rather unique to Florida.
I suspect that the appelation “Florida Room” was the creation of a marketing department of some home development firm, offering pre-built versions of what other people had retrofitted for themselves. And maintaining the smaller A/C system, for economic reasons, as well. The Florida Room was basically an upgraded but unairconditioned screen porch.
Do these “Florida Rooms” count in the square footage assessment of a house?
Having been living in Florida for decades and having seen many a home that was built shortly after WW2 into say the 70s’ I’d say Cannydan’s explanation of what a “Florida” room is (or was) and how the name came about is probably spot on.
Depends.
Some tax assessors use “livable space” or “space under roof”. Others (more recent) use “air conditioned space” which would not count, say, a garage or a Florida room. Some even count A/C space at one value, and “discount” other roofed area at some percentage value, say 1/2 of the value of A/C space.
I’ve even now been in some houses where the Florida Room is built as an integral part, not an afterthought, and is insulated and ducted into the main HVAC system. In these cases, the Florida Room is treated as another room with bigger windows and a different interior decor. It does though usually maintain the open-on-two-or-three-sides style, as if it was attached to the back of the house rather than integrated into its architectural design. But then, fascinating as this seems, outside the Florida Room often appears a patio, which is itself screened like an old fashiioned porch. Full circle.
To the OP though, a Florida Room will not have a pool. The common garden variety of pool has a screen room built around it, as bug deflector, as illustrated upthread.
I have though seen pools with a wall or walls partly surrounding them, and a screen frame making up the rest of a full enclosure. These walls are usually intended as privacy screens, when small lot sizes put your pool almost in your neighbor’s back yard.
The *House Hunters *you refer to might have seen any of these styles.
(thanks billfish!)
The ones on the program looked almost like giant clear geodesic domes over the pools. I couldn’t see the screens.
I’d hate to see what they look like when even a CAT 1 blows through the area.
Just last month I was at a house in that exact neighbourhood. With the same enclosure, same pool, same everything. I recognize that house; it backed onto the golf course.
The enclosure is solely for keeping out bugs, based on my observation that it keeps out nothing else; wind blows right through it and although it looks shady, it really doesn’t cut the sun much at all.
*Everybody *in Florida recognizes that house. It is the predominant style in countless subdivisions.