If I list a one-story house for sale and it has a basement, it’s a one-story house. If no basement, we call it a ranch, or if small, a bungalow, but all of this may be regional terminology for all I know.
It’s a matter of size. A bungalow is compact and relatively small, a ranch is a little bigger, more rambling and more open to the outside. Obviously there are overlaps.
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/bungalow-vs-ranch-house-8779.html
I don’t see where I really lose a lot of space to hallways. You go in through the front door of my house and come into an entrance hallway. When you get to the end of that, you’ve got the living room to your right and the home’s one real hallway to your left. The hallway leads to three bedrooms and a bathroom. It’s really not that long and doesn’t take up that much space. You have to go through the living room to get to the dining room/kitchen so there’s no space lost in a hallway there.
Mrs. Geek has trouble with stairs, so having almost everything on one floor is very convenient for her. Another plus is that we have a huge basement. There’s a rec room on one side (which Geek Child #1 is currently using for his bedroom), the laundry room, a 4th bedroom that I added, a small office, and my man-cave (which is big enough to hold a pool table) all in the basement.
I can hang Christmas lights all along the roof with just a simple ladder, and I can easily get up onto the roof if I need to. There’s nothing that’s difficult to reach.
It’s not a bad layout, IMHO.
I grew up in a ranch house neighborhood in San Fernando Valley, 1950s-1960s. The house had neither slab nor basement. It was raised up off the ground, with a crawl space underneath. There were three (3) steps going leading up to the front porch and door, and likewise at the back door.
It had a shallowly-sloped roof suitable for shedding rain, but not a steeply-sloped roof like you would have in snow country.
I only rarely saw houses of other designs (specifically, two-story houses or basements). On the infrequent occasion that I saw houses like that, they seemed utterly alien to me for a long time.
I would like to sincerely apologize for insulting people’s homes. I started this thread with only an abstract view of ranch homes, even if my hatred for them is real. 
The weird thing is that I actually like Wright’s designs. Sure, even Falling Water looks dated now, but it is still an interesting house to look at. Ranch houses? Meh.
There is no window looking at the waterfall! 
I live in a ranch and love it. The house was built in the late 70’s and has an awesome floorplan. No hauling laundry up and down stairs, no noisy kids playing upstairs, and no problems maneuvering furniture. You realize all of those 100-year-old 2-story homes were trendy at the time. Ranches then became the norm. In a few years even your new 2-story will look dated.
I have a ranch and a very short hallway. The hallway is seven feet. It passes by the width of my hall bathroom. End of the hall is a bedroom and turn to the right is the master bedroom.
I always loved my layout because the kitchen,dining room, living room are a open floorplan. very unusual for a mid 1950’s ranch. I looked at several in this neighborhood and they all had this floorplan.
its a big open L shaped area.
kitchen…open
…hallway
dining room…living room
…front door
I never understood why Falling Water was considered an architectural masterpiece. It is somewhat unique in an incredibly dated way but, like all Frank Loyd Wright works, it was innovative but structurally suspect and not a great example of anything that is livable. He was opposed to basic structural engineering so all building based on his designs fail and have to be propped up over time. The man was a complete failure as a lasting architect and a laughingstock as a structural engineer.
There, I have said it again. He ruined the American landscape through force off personality and nothing more. The only defense I have ever understood of the man was that I have seen horse drawn carriages at the front of what looked like Brady Bunch houses in the early 1900’s. That is innovative but even that will not carry you through the next six decades even though that was the fad at the time.
Contrast that with other American styles like the Colonial, log cabin, bungalow and certain truly modern designs among many others and you will see what a true failure the ranch house was in lasting terms. True, it was cheap but hopefully it will die a slow death as they get knocked down and get replaced with more tasteful and sensible designs.
Compared to the tiny, uninsulated “bungalows” newly discharged GI’s and their brides moved into, a ranch was a dream come true: lots of bedrooms and big yards for growing families, cheap prices on the GI bill, stable (read: ethnically homogenous) neighborhoods of similar young families.
As for halls, most older, pre-AC houses had huge central halls to encourage a draft.
I don’t understand what this means. I have a 3-bedroom ranch and can vacuum the entire hallway only having to take 3 steps.
My friend has a big colonial and when you go in her front door it’s a big empty room with a staircase off to the side, and at the top of the stairs is…a hallway. Twice the length of mine. So it’s like 3x the empty space as my little ranch.
What kind of houses don’t have hallways? Do you have to go through one bedroom to get to another?
I had no idea that was the case. What was the reasoning behind this?
That’s called a raised ranch.
People wanted bigger houses and fewer stairs. Land was cheaper than before too.
Fallingwater is built on the waterfall. The window would have to be on floor–not possible due to structural issues.
The waterfall is visible from the “porch” outside the living room.
I think a lot of us grew up in ranch home, and instinctively think of them as “normal.” That said, I don’t know many people who purposefully seek out ranch homes. But there are a lot of them and they are often affordable, so that’s what people get.
My architecture course in undergraduate school-some requirement of some kind-was taught by a Japanese woman, the wife of my Asian Indian adviser, who said that calculus and physics were co-requisites.
They weren’t, at least no one told the physics teacher.
But I digress.
It was two weeks before I realized that “Flay Loy Light” was Frank Loyd Wright.
Wright thought that if you could see the water fall from the house, it would be less aesthetically pleasing.
There was a table he didn’t want moved, and either he or the homeowners screwed it to the floor. There was a painting that he did not approve of, and the owners would take it down from the wall when he came to visit.
Probably to see if their toilet paper was aesthetically pleasing.
Wright did design a building in Japan with “floating foundations” to survive an earthquake.
A fellow student pointed out that if you build on a fault line, you are screwed, but I believe Wright’s building was successful.
I live in a three bedroom ranch house with a full basement. Maybe it isn’t as visually pleasing as the newer, more modern housing, but it has been comfortable for us. 18 more house payments, and it is ours.
We are old, and a ranch home makes more sense to us. Everything is on one floor. I have one step from the garage into the house when I carry in the groceries. When the dogs want to go out in the middle of the night I don’t have to navigate stairs in the dark. It suits us.
This seems to be pretty common. I have recently become a fan of Art Deco architecture. By the 50’s Art Deco was in full retreat and was considered dated, ugly, and over the top. Now, I think, it has come back to be appreciated. Maybe ranches will be appreciated again.