French Styles in Country House Architecture
France is a romantic country with picturesque landscapes, exquisite cuisine, and incredibly beautiful architecture.
We do facade design and can help you bring a little piece of France to your home. In the meantime, let us tell you what it is all about.
French architecture has been shaped by the legacy of several historical eras:
Romanesque, with its tendency to adorn facades with sculptures;
Gothic, with its soaring lancet windows and stained glass;
Renaissance, with palaces built around powerful, broad horizontal walls;
Rococo - the dawn of private homes for the French aristocracy, marked by luxury and a desire for wealth, with tall pilasters on the facades, roof balustrades, gables of varied shapes, and moldings shaped like scrolls and floral garlands.
French architecture was also heavily influenced by regional styles that emerged in the provinces, faithful to local traditions and the demands of the climate.
Taking the character of each region into account, three main types of houses are traditionally distinguished within the "French style": Provence, Chateau, and Norman.
Provence
This style took shape in the south of France as the style of the French countryside, and it is considered a variety of the Country style. However, Provence is more elegant and free of rough details. The houses range from one to three stories and are built of brick or stone (limestone).
The exterior walls are finished with beige, milky, blue, or lilac plaster, with rough natural or artificial stone resembling limestone, sandstone, and slate, as well as natural wood (clapboard).
Houses in the Provencal style almost completely lack a porch and a plinth. The path leading to the house runs straight up to the front doors.
Windows are usually small and narrow, with bright shutters that close tightly against the heat. In modern designs, however, in what is known as Neo-Provence, the window openings widen all the way down to floor level.
The roof is a pent roof with dormer windows, covered with shingles.
The main entrance may be decorated with artwork on floral themes.
The entrance door is usually massive, embellished with ironwork and fitted with a viewing window. In modern homes, glass doors with narrow frames and wooden shutters are also an option.
The Provence style is characterized by the presence of outbuildings. This may be a summer kitchen or an annex. In Neo-Provence, two structures connected by a terrace can be built.
Read more about every detail of the Provencal style and how to apply it to your home here.
CHATEAU
The Chateau style originated as the French castle, a country estate of the aristocracy. These houses are solid, beautiful mansions.
They have a complex facade line with many bay windows, projections, and arches, along with towers, pointed roofs with spires, and numerous chimneys.
Lancet windows appear on the attic floors. Dormers are also possible on multi-pitched roofs.
There are two entrance options: a solid wooden front door opening directly onto the garden, or double arched doors reached by a wide staircase, often a double one.
A basement is mandatory in the building, used as a wine cellar or utility room, a home theater, or a game room. From the outside, however, the basement seems absent, as its cladding is not emphasized.
On the second floor and above there are many floor-to-ceiling French windows that let in the maximum amount of daylight.
Double doors on the second floor open onto a wide balcony. Balconies can also be small and placed on either side of the main entrance.
A house in the Chateau style implies the presence of wings, which may house a swimming pool with a recreation area or a garage.
The facade colors are all kept warm and pastel. For the facade finish, plaster or facade tiles are the usual choice.
In the Chateau style, homes are built with pavilions, where the foundation is emphasized by a difference in color or by cladding the foundation and walls in a richer shade.
Norman Style
The Norman style took shape in northwestern France, in the province of Normandy, whose population consists mostly of people of Nordic origin, descendants of the Vikings. Hence the severity and coldness of the architecture and the emphasis on ancient Gothic forms.
The house can be single-story with an attic, or have two or more stories with balconies painted to match the trim.
The facade is decorated with figural, geometric, or interwoven ornaments inlaid into the masonry.
Today the use of fireclay ceramics is widespread.
The corners of the facade and the window openings are finished with rusticated panels that imitate stone.
A hallmark of the Norman style is the hip roof, with four pitches and wide gables. The roofs feature attic windows of the gable type, wrought-iron ornaments, and conical turrets.
The windows are more often narrow and framed, with semicircular arches on the upper floors. Flower boxes sit on the windows, all framed by wide pediments.
A porch with wrought-iron railings leads up to the massive entrance doors.
Modern cottages are built of brick and clad with artificial stone or stucco.
Colors in Normandy are varied - ocher, brown, pink, and gray facades. In our country, calmer, sandy shades are popular.
The Norman style makes wide use of colombage techniques (the French version of the half-timbered house style). Wooden vertical posts following the wall pattern and the "Saint Andrew's Cross" pattern (a diagonal cross) predominate here. In modern facade design in the colombage style, polyurethane beams that imitate dark wood can be used.
When speaking of the "French style" in country house architecture, we should not forget that we are talking about stylistic signs and elements, while the design solutions and the materials used meet modern living conditions. So Provence-style houses have floor-to-ceiling glass doors, Chateau-style houses have a specially marked foundation, and Norman-style houses have balustrades.
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