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Of all the rooms in a home (bedrooms, perhaps, excluded) porches conjure up the sweetest memories. Bathrooms, kitchens, and basements all produce their share of heartache from time to time, and living rooms and dining rooms run the gamut from war zone to neutral territory. But what’s not to love about a porch? They invoke thoughts of gracious living, cool retreats on summer days, and front-porch Americana. I will always relish the memory of the screened-in side porch of my childhood. I’d read there for hours on our vinyl-clad glider with the blue morning glory pattern, slurping down one popsicle after another, listening to the neighbors mowing their lawns.

A porch is sybaritic and dreamy, an escape and a retreat. It’s where we go to get cool, where we might get some sleep on really hot nights. Air conditioners are great, but there’s no romance in them. Porches let us watch the world go by, or take in the view. They let us enjoy the outdoors without––let’s admit––being inconvenienced by it.

“Porches offer an indoor-outdoor transition,” says architect Scott Fiorentino of Fiorentino Group Architects in York, Maine, and he notes that a screened porch is part of every house he designs these days. Builder , owner of Kevin Roy Builders in Stratham, N.H., agrees: “Almost every custom house I build has a porch,” he says. Porches are popular with waterfront or mountainside homeowners, says Scott, because they allow better and wider views. Porches also serve a practical function: extending living space at a cost more reasonable than adding regular rooms. “A lot of baby boomers are downsizing, and a porch offers flexible space,” says Fiorentino. You can use the porch for storage in the winter and practically live in it the rest of the year. A related trend, he notes, are a lot of orders for back-to-back fireplaces, with one fireplace facing the porch. This allows homeowners to use the porch further into the season.

And people sure do love to use their porches. “In the summer, that’s where we spend all our time,” says John Cavaretta. Seventeen years ago, he and partner Randal Coulton bought their 1930s camp on a lake in Parsonsfield, Maine, and “the porch was a big selling point,” says Cavaretta. In black-fly season, he notes, the lake-view porch is the only way to enjoy some fresh air in relative comfort.

For Hampton, N.H. resident Vivianne Marcotte, “a porch was one of my prerequisites,” she says, when having her new home designed about six years ago. Marcotte’s porch wraps around the east and south sides of her house, and offers an ocean view. “It’s really great,” she says. “It’s just so pleasant to sit out here and meditate, watch the ocean, or read a book.” Visitors gravitate to the porch as well: “No matter who comes, we always sit there.” Ocean breezes enable Marcotte to enjoy her ocean-facing porch without screens, but she did have the south side of the porch screened off for dining, and also installed a TV, up and out of the elements. When any of her fifteen grandchildren visit, she is able to let them come in off the beach onto the porch and just relax. “I don’t care if they’re wet,” she says.

Homeowner Randy Lynch loves porches so much that he included three when building his home in New Castle, N.H. One of these is a sleeping porch, which he uses from mid-May to mid-October. “I sleep better there,” says Randy. “It’s refreshing, almost like camping. It’s also really nice in the morning, hearing the birds. Your senses are heightened by all the natural sounds.”

Of course, not all porches are extended living spaces. Some can be a simple portico by the front door with room for a rocker or two. These could fall into the category of what we think of as the traditional front porch—“back when houses were ten feet off the road,” says Kevin Roy. Those kinds of porches served, and still serve in some communities, the function of a transitional space between public and private, much in the way that a big screened-in backyard porch offers that transition between home and nature. Out on your front porch, you can see and be seen, but still enjoy the comfort of your own home.

There’s yet another function that porches serve—visual appeal. Back in the ’80s, notes Roy, porches were the first to go when homeowners building new houses were cutting costs. During that time, a lot of unfortunate flat-faced dwellings were erected, he notes. Many a traditional-type house would look better with a porch, he maintains. “The New England vernacular certainly welcomes a porch,” says Scott Fiorentino.

Most New Englanders themselves welcome a porch as well. There’s nothing quite like resting or reading lazily on your shady porch, enjoying the breezes and listening to the buzz of mosquitoes—from the other side of the screen.