[8][9] The house is at 17 Braemar Gardens, West Wickham, Kent, in the United Kingdom (now a suburb of Greater London).

[6][8][10][11][12][13][14] Series art director Lia Kramer, who had helped create The 1900 House, identified the property and oversaw its restoration.

[10] The Tudorbethan house, originally built in 1932 by Bradfield Bros & Murphy, was retrofitted to reflect the technology and fashions of a middle-class English home of the late 1930s.

[10][15] The house was decorated in a style typical of the 1930s, which included some used Victorian furniture and a small number of Art Deco pieces.

[10] A 1930s-style gas-fired cooking stove, Belfast sink, draining board, metal-topped table, and fold-down work shelf were installed in the kitchen.

[1][2][11][12][17] The near-nightly sound of the air-raid siren (fixed in a hallway in the home) left the family unnerved, even after they returned to their regular lives.

[14][19] A special section was established in the rear of a local delicatessen where the family could shop for 1940s-era food, but which also suffered from "wartime rationing" to mimic real conditions.

[17][22] Nonetheless, Lyn Hymers later said in an interview that the family did feel isolated, and never got the sense of community spirit that people living in the 1940s would have felt.

[6][10] There were five episodes: PBS aired the series in the U.S. between 4 November and 2 December 2002,[24] which reviewers and members of the Hymers family felt reduced American viewership.

[2][6][8][11][14][22] The producers also felt the Hymers were well-spoken but also argumentative, which would make for good television as well as showcase a 1940s family's need to pull together.

[2][23] However, the family did admit to some cheating: Michael Hymers used Brylcreem for his hair, Thomas secretly listened to music by S Club 7, and both boys obtained modern snacks such as crisps from schoolmates.

[12][15] Lyn Hymers admitted that she suffered from depression after the series ended, overwhelmed by how hard life had been for women in the 1940s.

The Newcastle upon Tyne Evening Chronicle said "the series gives an extraordinary insight into life as it was lived by the majority of the population during World War Two.

[27] Several reviewers pointed out that the fact-based nature of the show was impressive, with The Hartford Courant declaring it "a great way to mix the facts of history with the voyeurism of reality programming".

[23][28] The Seattle Post-Intelligencer felt the show was "supremely instructive" and was "compelling in spite of its obvious disclosures" because of the large amounts of factual information imparted by the narrator and "war cabinet" throughout the series.

Writing in The Times, Peter Barnard lauded the show's goal of attempting to educate viewers about the past, but concluded that The 1940s House failed in this respect.

[3] A very large 53 per cent of professional, managerial, and skilled workers (the ABC Television network's key social demographic) watched the series.