Architectural Styles

It’s one thing to be out and about shopping for your dream home, but it’s another thing entirely another to be able to answer questions about the style of that dream home. It goes beyond just wanting an “old” house or preferring “new”. After all, your agent will be able to help you even more if they know you like Spanish revival or Gothic Victorian  At the very least, it will save you an embarrassing anecdote that your daughter will write about twenty years later wherein her father genuinely believed Tudor homes were named that simply because they just had two doors. 

Don’t Be Like Dave

Depending on what part of Lake Norman or the wider Charlotte-Mecklenburg metro in which you’re house hunting, you’re likely to find a variety of home styles. We do have a fairly wide swath of homes when it comes to their age. Anything older than 170 years old has been turned into a museum, with a small handful of truly historic residential homes. There are, however, plenty of established neighborhoods with homes built in the 1950s and onward. 

Cape Cod 

One style you may come across is Cape Cod. Don’t get that confused with the darling New England vacation locale, though the homes built in this style do mimic the charming cottages up North. They tend to be modest, pleasantly sized, and with steeper rooflines (meant for snow and rain to quickly run off). 

Ranch 

In some of our more established neighborhoods you will find Ranch style homes. These tend to be long single-story homes, most often in brick. They cropped up a lot during the midcentury as suburbs of cities were beginning to really form, and often these homes are sprawling (as a way of taking up space in the suburbs not afforded to someone in a city). Think large lawns, patios with sliding glass doors, and carports or breezeways. 

Spanish

Like we mentioned in the intro, another popular design style is Spanish Revival. This style is most seen in the Southwest but also a significant number found here in the South. The idea is that they are built from the ground up to withstand high temperatures. The clay tile roofs repel sunlight, keeping the inside cooler, and these tiles often overhang the roofline to provide additional shade on the ground. Arched windows are designed to take in more breeze and the outdoor spaces are punctuated with columns. 

Of course there are dozens more architectural styles and we’ll be covering those in bits and pieces over the coming weeks!