Sleeping Porches

A sleeping porch is a porch that is screened and furnished for sleeping in the summer months. Before the advent of air conditioning, some houses had a porch having open sides or many windows designed to catch any breeze. Sleeping porches can be on ground level but they were often preferred on a higher story to catch more of the breezes. They could be in either the front or back of a home. It just needed to be well ventilated.



The start of the sleeping porch in the United States is thought to be at the beginning of the twentieth century with the large wraparound porches of Southern plantations. The development of screens led to these porches being screened in to keep out bugs. Some of these screens were replaced with windows later. Southerners often refer to sleeping porches as galleries.













If you have a sleeping porch, you can still use them.











OK, this is so cute! But, in reality, can you imagine swinging around every time your bunk mate turned over? And how do you change the sheets and make the bed for those upper beds? But the idea just caught my attention and I threw it in.