According to Anastasios Orlandos, who was the first to study the palaces and homes of Mystras, the houses formed an elongated rectangle, which sometimes had a tall tower. They comprised cellars with water tanks and warehouses or stables, a mezzanine with more storage areas, and one or two floors, of which the uppermost was the triklinos , with a timber saddleback roof.

Depending on the position of the long sides, along or across the slope of the steep hill at Mystras, the houses can be separated into two categories: narrow-fronted and wide-fronted buildings. The first include houses with long sides perpendicular to the contour of the hill. In these cases the long sides ran deep into the slope, requiring excavations and leveling. In addition, the vaulted basements were partly taken up by the bedrock and only had room for underground rainwater tanks. Houses in the second category had their long sides parallel to the incline of the hill; building them did not require excavation, the floors were always wooden, and the cellar was as large as the rest of the house. The former buildings were better oriented compared to the latter: the windows to the north allowed the breeze to cool the triklinos in the summer months, while those to the south let in more sunlight during winter. In addition, the balcony on the narrow side (as in the houses of Laskaris and Frangopoulos) had a good view of the Eurotas river valley.

The houses in the second category can be further differentiated with respect to the way the tower was linked to the main body of the house: in some cases it was built into one of the narrow sides of the house, as in the case of Building A in the palaces, and sometimes it abutted one end of the long side, as, for example, in the so-called House B in Pano Chora.

The existence of a tower cannot be explained without taking into account that both monastic and fortification architecture in Late Byzantium intended towers to serve both as shelters and as residences for abbots, castellans and generally people in positions of authority. On the other hand, the tower is by nature a fortification building, which in the case of Mystras could be associated with the stance of the population. In some cases the people opposed political decisions taken by their commanders, as occurred when Theodore Paleologus surrendered the city to the Knights Hospitaller in 1402.