The Roman house was multi-functional and represented much about who the Romans were. Investigation of the Roman house can reveal details about the unique Roman way of life. The Roman house defined who the owner was and what their social status was. Houses for the Romans were both showpieces and practical spaces for daily living and business matters, part of their multi-functional and pragmatic nature. In terms of purpose, inhabitants, technology, spatial arrangement and decoration, the Roman household had a lot of differences when compared to the modern American house. Though the Roman house has many differences with the modern home, there are some notable similarities between the two.

Roman houses were not houses in the modern sense. In the Roman world, privacy was not something highly desired or sought out, and this was reflected in the very public nature of the Roman household. Roman households, at least to the elite, were designed to be open to the streets and to the public. The patron and client relationship, which does not survive to the present day in the manner that the Romans practiced it, made it necessary for the home to be open and free for admission so that clients could call on the master of the home who was their patron. This lack of a need for privacy in the Roman home is also seen in the way rooms were arranged based on their purpose. There was no specific master bedroom, no space just for women, and no area designated for children. Most activity went on in the most public of rooms. Modern homes are designed for privacy, closed off by door and window so that people on the street cannot look in whereas Roman homes were very visible to people on the street. In the modern home, too, certain rooms are designated for children, for women, and for privacy. Bedrooms in the Roman household were not specifically given to one person as they are in the modern American home. The kitchen is also an important room in the modern American home. To the Romans, the kitchen was largely the domain of the slaves who cooked and served. In urban dwellings, in apartments, the common class of Roman citizens usually did not even have kitchens because they went to cook shops and ate precooked foods. Modern American homes always come with kitchens no matter their economic class.

The Roman home was also more than just a home, in addition to being a place for patron and client interaction, entertainment, banquets, and family affairs. Unlike the modern home where leisure away from work is the purpose, Romans conducted business at home. The Roman home was as much a place of work as it was a place of relaxation. It was in fact not uncommon for large Roman homes to have shops and workhouses attached to them, sometimes slave owned and sometimes rented out to others. This is similar to the modern practice of buying property for rental purposes, but rarely do landlords today allow parts of their own homes to be rented out to become a shop. Some modern families do live in spaces above or attached to their shops, so the idea of home and work is similar in some individual cases. Another difference in the Roman home is that they needed specific areas for slaves, so many rooms were reserved for slave dwelling and slave activity like sleeping quarters and the kitchen.

Most modern homes have plumbing whereas only the richest of Roman homes could afford pipes to bring water in to the house; bathrooms were usually chamber pots in the kitchen. Rainwater in the Roman home was collected in the impluvium in the atrium, another aspect distinct to Roman homes. Roman homes also, if money allowed, had heating by way of terra cotta pieces warming the inside of walls behind painted motifs. The Roman arrangement of space was also very different from how the modern American arranges the space in his or her home. In addition to the public nature of Roman space, the house was also decorated in order to be arranged into hierarchical schemes based on color, the specific motifs from landscape to mythological scene depicted on the walls, and the framework of the panels themselves. These elements were used to depict the nature of the space whether a space was public or private (privacy relating to whether space was open to anyone or invitees only) or whether the space was meant to be grand or humble in purpose and portrayal. Homes were on display as status objects. Roman homes were meant to be seen inside and out, which was why the hierarchy of color, motif, and framework were so important. Modern American homes are also seen as status objects, put on display from the outside and on the inside by the quality of brands used to furnish. Both Romans and modern Americans benefit from the mass production of status objects, so elites of both generations must stay ahead of the lower classes who emulate them.

The Roman house was unique in its design and function to the Roman concepts of room and house purpose, the inhabitants of the home, the technology of plumbing and heating, the arrangement of space and decoration. In those ways, the Roman home was different from the home of the modern American. The Romans combined business with leisure in the home and did not value privacy the way that modern Americans do. American homes do not require rooms for slaves, either. Decoration in the Roman home was meant to set up a hierarchical arrangement of space, as well, which differs from the American way of decoration. There are ways in which the Roman house was similar to the modern American home. Roman homes were like some modern American homes in their use of space and the importance of the home as a status object.