The House in the Middle is the title of two American documentary film shorts, respectively from 1953 and 1954, which showed the effects of a nuclear bomb test on a set of three small houses. The black-and-white 1953 film was created by the Federal Civil Defense Administration to attempt to show that a clean, freshly painted house (the middle house) is more likely to survive a nuclear attack than its poorly maintained counterparts (the right and left houses). A color version was released the next year by the , a "bureau" invented by the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association trade group (now known as the American Coatings Association).