The song originated from a domestic event that took place while Graham Nash was living with Joni Mitchell (and her two cats[4]) in her house in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, after they had gone out for breakfast and had bought an inexpensive vase on Ventura Boulevard.

[4] In October 2013, in an interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, Nash elaborated: Well, it's an ordinary moment.

Crosby is one of the most unique musicians I know, and Stephen Stills has got this blues-based, South American kind of feeling to his music.

Graham Nash once admitted that he was "bored with 'Our House' the day after [he] recorded it", but will play it occasionally "because it does mean so much to so many people".

[9] It is praised for its "innocent elegance",[10] though Barney Hoskyns called it a "trite ditty" and wondered what Neil Young, whose protest song "Ohio" (about the Kent State Massacre) as recorded and released by CSNY in June 1970, would have thought of it: "the journey from 'Ohio' back to 'Our House' seemed to sum up a general failure of nerve in the LA music scene".

[11] The song has been covered by a number of artists, including Helen Reddy, The Onyx, Phantom Planet, Sheena Easton, Kidsongs and Sharon, Lois & Bram.

It appears in the 1996 Only Fools and Horses Christmas special, Time on Our Hands, watched by 24.3 million viewers in the United Kingdom.

An episode of Cheers titled "Dinner at Eight-ish" had Frasier Crane and Lilith singing it in honor of their new apartment, only to stop very abruptly when Diane chimed in.

In the fourth season of This is Us, Rebecca, in parallel scenes with her husband Jack and her son Kevin, visits the old home of Joni Mitchell in Los Angeles and relays the story of how "Our House" came to be a song.