Home Style Basics
A friendly guide to home style and character
A plain-language starting point for reading a home's character, covering the features that signal its style, how eras and materials build on each other, and where to begin looking.
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Architectural Styles
Art Deco houses: geometry, curves and decorative detail
Find out which features mark an Art Deco house, from stepped forms and geometric ornament to streamlined curves and the materials behind the style's polished look.
Materials and Craftsmanship
Brick, stone and render: how exterior materials age
Brick, stone and render weather differently because of porosity, mortar and finish. Learn the early signs of decay, the repair mistakes that speed it up and how to clean older walls safely.
House History and Stories
Bringing family history into the rooms you live in
Family objects look best when a house gives them a place to belong. Learn how to choose meaningful pieces, protect them from light and damage, place them with the architecture and hang them safely.
Home Style Basics
Common mistakes when mixing styles in one home
Mixed-style homes feel unsettled for a few repeatable reasons: overloading one era, ignoring scale, copying showroom looks and fighting the architecture. Learn how to spot and fix each one.
Architectural Styles
Craftsman bungalows: origins and defining features
Craftsman bungalows grew from the Arts and Crafts movement. Their low gabled roofs, deep porches, exposed structure and built-in woodwork define a style worth recognizing.
Furnishing and Layout
Creating conversation areas in long or narrow rooms
How to split a long or narrow room into zones, pull seating together, and use rugs, side tables and lamps to make each area feel like a place to talk.
Furnishing and Layout
Dining room layouts that suit the original plan of a house
How to plan a dining room around a house's original layout, covering where the room historically sat, table size and clearances, kitchen routes and existing doors.
Interior Design Styles
Eclectic rooms: how to mix eras and origins with intention
Combine furniture and objects from different eras and places so a room reads as curated rather than jumbled, using one unifying thread and a balance of old and new pieces.
Materials and Craftsmanship
Encaustic and ceramic tile: origins and patterns in older homes
Encaustic and ceramic tiles differ in how their patterns are made. Learn how inlaid, cement and glazed tiles were produced, the designs common in older homes and how to care for them.
Interior Design Styles
Farmhouse interiors: their roots and the details that matter
Explore where farmhouse interiors came from, how working rural homes shaped the look, and the details and installation checks that keep the style grounded.
Period Features
Fireplaces in older homes: what to keep and why
Which original fireplace features to keep, how fireplaces shaped the plan of older rooms, and the chimney and flue checks to make before any change to the hearth.
Furnishing and Layout
Furniture placement mistakes that undercut older rooms
The placement errors that weaken older rooms, from blocking windows, doors and radiators to floating furniture and ignoring the house's original layout.
Furnishing and Layout
Furniture scale and proportion in rooms of different sizes
How to match furniture size to a room's floor area and ceiling height, test layouts with floor outlines, and adjust pieces for small and large rooms alike.
Architectural Styles
Georgian homes and the appeal of symmetry
Georgian houses look orderly because their facades balance a central door, matched windows and regular proportions. Learn how symmetry, sash windows and classical ideas shaped the style.
Furnishing and Layout
How to arrange a living room around one focal point
Learn how to choose one focal point in a living room, group seating around it, and keep walking routes clear so the room feels settled and easy to use.
Home Style Basics
How to build a home that feels like yours over time
A home feels personal when its choices build up deliberately: a steady pace, a short list of priorities, slowly gathered objects and regular reviews of what still works.
House History and Stories
How to research the history of an older house
Start with the house, then work through local records, maps, directories and census entries. Learn how to build a dated timeline from partial sources and judge what each record can show.
Home Style Basics
How to tell which style a house belongs to
Work out a house's style by reading its roofline, windows, entrance, materials and interior details together, and allow for the later changes that blur most older homes.
Interior Design Styles
Japandi and wabi-sabi: rooms built on restraint and imperfection
Learn how Japandi and wabi-sabi differ from ordinary minimalism, the shared respect for natural materials and imperfection, and practical ways to bring them into a room.
House History and Stories
Keeping a record of changes to an older house
A dated change log keeps the story of an older house intact. Learn what to record, how to photograph work before walls close and where to keep receipts, plans and product details.
Materials and Craftsmanship
Lime plaster and why older walls need to breathe
How lime plaster hardens, how it grips wood lath and masonry, and why gypsum patches and film-forming paints can trap moisture and damage older walls.
Interior Design Styles
Maximalist rooms: how to keep bold choices coherent
Keep a richly layered maximalist room feeling deliberate by anchoring it with strong pieces, repeating colors and motifs, and balancing light and dark tones across the space.
Architectural Styles
Mid-century modern houses: how their design took shape
See how postwar materials, open plans, large glazing and earlier modernist ideas shaped mid-century modern houses, and what to check in an original example.
House History and Stories
Misleading clues to avoid when dating an older house
Style, salvage and single records can all point to the wrong date for an older house. Learn which clues mislead, how to cross-check sources and how to state a house's age honestly.
Period Features
Original floors: what to check before refinishing them
What to check before sanding or refinishing original floorboards, including wood species, usable thickness, past repairs, moisture damage, hidden services and when to call a specialist.
Period Features
Original moldings: what they reveal and how to care for them
What original moldings reveal about a house's age and builders, how to read dating clues in their profiles and joints, and how to clean, repair and replace them with care.
Materials and Craftsmanship
Reading craftsmanship: joints, finishes and tool marks
Joints, saw and plane marks, finish layers and fasteners all reveal how an older piece was made. Learn which clues to check, how to read them in good light and when to leave a piece alone.
Period Features
Sash windows and why they shape an older facade
How sash windows are built, how their pane patterns set the look of an older facade, and the trade-offs between repairing original sashes and replacing them.
Interior Design Styles
Scandinavian interiors: where the style came from
Trace Scandinavian interior style from its northern climate and craft traditions through the Gustavian period and twentieth-century design to its place as a global look.
Furnishing and Layout
Sightlines and flow: planning how rooms connect
How sightlines between rooms, the paths people take through doorways and the design of thresholds shape whether a house feels coherent and easy to move through.
Materials and Craftsmanship
Solid wood or veneer: telling the two apart
Practical ways to tell solid wood from veneer in furniture and fittings using edges, grain, joints and wear, and what each finding means for repair and care.
Period Features
Stained glass in older homes: where it appeared and why it lasts
Where stained glass appeared in older houses, how panels are built with lead came or copper foil, and how to protect them from condensation, weather and handling damage.
Period Features
Staircases and banisters: the feature that defines a hall
The parts of a traditional staircase, how stair design changed across older periods, and how to repair loose balusters, newel posts and handrails while keeping the stair safe.
Interior Design Styles
Traditional, transitional and modern: how interior styles differ
Compare traditional, transitional and modern interiors by their rules, palettes, furniture and details, and learn how to blend them into one room without a jumble.
Architectural Styles
Tudor revival homes and their half-timbered facades
Understand what the half-timbered look on Tudor revival houses signifies, how the original timber frame was built and how to recognize the revival style on the street.
House History and Stories
Using deeds, plans and photos to trace a home through time
Deeds show ownership, plans show intent and photographs show how a house looked. Learn how to read each record, check them against one another and keep your findings organized.
Architectural Styles
Victorian and Edwardian houses compared at a glance
Learn how Victorian and Edwardian houses differ in timing, facade decoration, roof shapes and interior planning, and why the two labels are often confused.
Home Style Basics
What gives a room its personality
Personality in a room comes from proportion, honest materials and a few objects with history. Learn how ceiling height, surfaces and carefully chosen pieces give a space its own character.
Home Style Basics
What to know before changing the style of an older house
Before restyling an older house, learn what is original, which local rules may apply, what the building's own logic suggests and how to sequence decisions from structure to finish.