A one-family house is a self-contained apartment in a building envelope, which usually serves as a residential house for a family and contains a residential unit for this purpose.

A so-called one-family house is usually one to two-storey and can be built in rows, detached or as a garden courtyard house. There is also talk of single-family houses if there is a building in which there are two housing units, one of which is a granny flat. One-family houses are usually owned by the occupant and represent a variant of home ownership. Less often they are rented by the owner to another person. A so-called one-family house can be designed either as a single-storey bungalow or multi-storeyed. Among the most common types of houses are terraced houses, semi-detached houses, detached one-family houses, but also courtyard or atrium houses and the atrium house.