For generations, Kashmir’s traditional hamam was the warm heart of family life during the Valley’s harsh winters. As reinforced concrete homes, electric heating and changing lifestyles transform Kashmir, this centuries-old stone-heated sanctuary is quietly disappearing, reflecting profound changes in architecture, domestic life and cultural traditions.
Kashmir :For generations, the hamam was the warm heart of a Kashmiri home during the harsh winter months. As reinforced concrete houses, electric heating and changing lifestyles reshape the Valley, this centuries-old tradition is quietly disappearing, reflecting not only an architectural shift but changing ideas of family, comfort and home.
For generations, the arrival of Chillai-Kalan, the 40-day stretch of biting, sub-zero winter in the Kashmir Valley, was met with a familiar domestic retreat: moving the entire household’s life into the hamam.
The traditional Kashmiri residential hamam is a stone-heated sanctuary. Its foundation rests on a hollow subfloor lined with Devri kani, dense, hand-carved grey limestone quarried locally. Firewood is fed through a small iron hatch into the chamber below, where hot air circulates through stone channels, warming the floor for nearly 24 hours.
For decades, this single room served as the emotional and practical centre of Kashmiri winter life. Children spread their notebooks across its warm floor, grandparents soothed aching joints, mothers dried damp winter clothes, and families gathered over cups of steaming kahwa.
Yet, as Srinagar’s urban landscape rapidly shifts from traditional wood-and-mud homes to multi-storey reinforced cement concrete (RCC) houses, the stone hearth is quietly disappearing from everyday blueprints. What was once a winter necessity is increasingly viewed as an expensive, labour-intensive feature—or simply a relic of another time.
But the decline of the hamam is about far more than changing methods of heating. As Kashmir’s homes modernise, the transition is reshaping ideas of comfort, privacy, domestic labour and family life, reflecting not simply an architectural change but a broader reimagining of what a modern Kashmiri home is expected to provide.
The Invisible Burden: A Woman’s Winter Chores
While architectural discussions often centre on cost and design, the human reality inside the home paints a sharper picture of why the hamam is losing favour, particularly among women, who bear the brunt of managing traditional winter heating.
“Everyone loves sitting in a warm hamam room, but nobody talks about what it takes to keep it warm,” says Dilshada, 52, a homemaker from Srinagar’s Lal Bazar.
Lighting a hamam means stepping outside before dawn to stack firewood, clear soot and tend the fire in freezing temperatures.
“When the snow falls, going outside at six in the morning to fight with cold wood and smoke is exhausting,” Dilshada explains. “In our old home, lighting the hamam fell on the women or elderly men. When we built our new house, I told my family clearly: I want a floor where I can press a button or plug in a heater. The labour behind the hamam is brutal.”
For many households, modern heating is not simply a technological upgrade but a reduction in daily physical labour. Electric floor heating and room heaters eliminate the need to haul firewood, clean ash and tend fires several times a day, allowing families—particularly women—to spend less time maintaining warmth and more time on work, childcare and other responsibilities.
No Structural Barriers, Only Changing Lifestyles
Engineers confirm that the hamam’s decline is not caused by modern building methods but by shifting domestic priorities.
“There is a persistent myth that you cannot build a traditional hamam inside a modern concrete house,” says Tariq Ahmad, a Srinagar-based civil engineer. “Technically speaking, there is no major structural barrier. We regularly integrate them into modern RCC designs when clients ask.”
According to Tariq, the shift is almost entirely behavioural and economic.
“The primary factor driving people away from traditional hamams is convenience,” Tariq notes. “They demand constant maintenance: stockpiling firewood before winter, finding a dry place to store it, and managing smoke and ash. Modern urban families simply don’t have the space or the time for that anymore.”
According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), around three-fourths (75.2%) of households in Jammu and Kashmir now live in pucca houses, reflecting a long-term shift away from traditional timber-and-mud construction. As housing styles have changed, so too have expectations around heating, comfort and interior design.
The Economics of Warmth: Firewood vs. Switches
The economics of winter heating have also changed.
“Building a traditional stone hamam today costs around ₹2 lakh,” Tariq says, pointing to the rising costs of Devri stone and specialised masonry. “An electric hamam costs roughly ₹80,000 to ₹1 lakh to install. You flip a wall switch, and the floor warms up within minutes.”
For many middle-class families building new homes, the lower installation cost and convenience of electric heating often outweigh the appeal of a traditional stone hamam. Unlike traditional systems, electric heating requires no firewood storage, smoke management or daily maintenance, making it easier to incorporate into contemporary lifestyles.
The trade-off, however, is dependence on electricity. Residents interviewed for this story said electric floor heating becomes ineffective during prolonged winter power outages, whereas a traditional stone hamam can retain heat for almost a full day after a single firing.
Even so, the shift towards electric heating continues.
“The future of the traditional hamam is bleak,” Tariq says. “Demand drops every year.”
The Friction of Generations: Privacy vs. Community
For younger Kashmiris, the disappearance of the hamam is tied to a broader cultural shift in ideas of privacy and personal space.
Because traditional hamams were expensive to construct and fuel, families usually built only one per household. During Chillai-Kalan, every family member lived, worked and slept in that single room.
“Growing up, we had no choice—you went where the hamam was, which meant eight people in one room all winter,” says Uzair Bhat, 24, a software developer working remotely from Srinagar.
“I love the nostalgia of those winter evenings with my cousins, but as an adult working long hours, I need my own desk and privacy,” Uzair says. “With panel heaters and central heating in individual rooms, everyone isn’t forced into one corner of the house. We lost some of that togetherness, but we gained personal space.”
Separate heated rooms have also made it easier for people to work from home, study without interruption and adapt their living spaces to increasingly individual routines—changes that many younger residents see as an improvement rather than a compromise.
A Changing Idea of Home
The decline of Kashmir’s hamam is about far more than a change in heating technology. It reflects changing ideas of family life, domestic labour, comfort and the very purpose of home itself.
While modern heating has brought convenience, privacy and greater independence to many households, it has also loosened the shared winter rituals that once gathered entire families around a single warm stone floor.
As concrete homes replace traditional timber-and-stone architecture, the hamam is becoming less a necessity than a memory. Its gradual disappearance captures both the gains and the trade-offs of a rapidly changing Kashmir.
