Homeowner searches for dedicated mahjong rooms have jumped more than twentyfold, and speakeasy-style spaces are up 75%, according to Houzz’s own 2026 trend report, which tracked home-design search activity from January through March. The data points to a broader pivot toward screen-free, analog-era hangout spaces built for cards, tiles, and conversation instead of a television.

Key Points

• Houzz reports searches for “mahjong room” skyrocketed more than twentyfold in early 2026, the single largest jump among home entertainment spaces the platform tracked.
• Searches for speakeasy-style spaces rose 75%, part of the same category Houzz calls “Nostalgic Spaces.”
• Related analog hangout spaces are climbing too: card rooms up 129%, home libraries (bibliothèque-style) up 191%, board game rooms up 45%, and poker rooms up 38%, as confirmed in coverage of the same Houzz data.
• Houzz attributes the shift to homeowners seeking “screen-free enjoyment” and spaces built for in-person, analog social gathering rather than passive screen time.
• AOL’s coverage of the report notes the rising cost of dining and entertainment outside the home as an added factor pulling homeowners toward building their own gathering spaces instead.

Why Tile Rooms and Hidden Bars, Specifically

Mahjong and speakeasy-style rooms aren’t just showing up as isolated data points — they’re part of a cluster. Houzz’s report groups them alongside card rooms, poker rooms, board game rooms, and home libraries under one heading built around nostalgia and disconnection from screens. Per the report, as cited by Culturemap, “searches for ‘mahjong room’ skyrocketed nearly 20x, while searches also climbed for ‘card room’ (up 129 percent), ‘board game room’ (up 45 percent) and ‘poker room’ (up 38 percent), pointing to a renewed love of tabletop gaming and convivial gathering.”

A Pandemic-Era Habit With Staying Power

Mahjong in particular has spent the last few years crossing over from a game associated mostly with older generations into a genuine social-media-fueled hobby among younger homeowners, who’ve been building dedicated tile rooms the same way earlier trend cycles built home theaters or wine cellars. Speakeasy-style spaces — hidden bars, low lighting, Prohibition-era styling — tap a similar impulse but skew toward adult entertaining rather than tabletop games. Both point to the same underlying behavior Houzz’s data captures: homeowners converting spare rooms and basements into single-purpose spaces built around an activity, not a screen.

Whether these rooms stay a fixture of home design past this cycle or fade like past niche remodels, the search data suggests one thing clearly — for a growing number of homeowners in 2026, “entertainment room” now means a place to shuffle tiles or mix a cocktail, not one more spot to put a TV.