Home recording is the practice of recording sound in a private home instead of a professional recording studio. A studio set up for home recording is called a home studio or project studio. Home recording is widely practiced by voice actors, narrators, singers, musicians, podcast hosts, and documentary makers at all levels of success. The cost of professional audio equipment has dropped steadily as technology advances during the 21st century, while information about recording techniques has become easily available online. These trends have resulted in an increase in the popularity of home recording and a shift in the recording industry toward recording in the home studio.

In 2020, the onset of the COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in a dramatic global increase in the number of remote workers in 2020, as well as home-based recording artists, which also led to the proliferation of internet-based microgenres like bedroom pop and egg punk.

During the 1960s, artists such as Hasil Adkins and British producer Joe Meek became early pioneers of home recording. Around the same time, the Who's Pete Townshend built their own private home recording studio, where he recorded demos for much of the band's early material and later his first solo album, Who Came First. The recording sessions for the album inspired the Beatles' Paul McCartney to experiment with home recording on his 1970 debut solo album McCartney.

In 1973, Jamaican reggae producer Lee "Scratch" Perry built Black Ark Studios, where he pioneered several innovative production techniques as well as the dub genre. In 1986, American musician Prince, built a private home recording studio known as Paisley Park.

Until the late 1970s, music could be recorded either on low-quality tape recorders or on large, expensive reel-to-reel tape machines. Due to their high price and specialized nature, reel-to-reel machines were only practical for professional studios and wealthy artists. In 1979, Tascam invented the Portastudio, a small four-track machine aimed at the consumer market.

With this new product, small multitrack tape recorders became widely available, and grew in popularity throughout the 1980s.

In the 1990s, analog tape machines were supplanted by digital recorders and computer-based digital audio workstations (DAWs). These new devices were designed to convert audio tracks into digital files, and record the files onto magnetic tape (such as ADAT), hard disk, compact disc, or flash ROM.

The way the room sounds or reverberates can change dramatically the way music is mixed, written, and recorded. Untreated rooms have an uneven frequency response, which means that any mixing decisions being made are being based on a sound that is ‘coloured,’ because sound mixers can not accurately hear, what is being played. Acoustic panels and bass traps can improve the sound in the room.