Residential Design Guide - Tudor Style
The Tudor style is based on English homes that were built near the end of the medieval period, from the late 15th century to shortly after the turn of the 17th century. The style is named for the Tudor family, which ruled England during that time, and Tudor home exteriors are typified by half-timbered stucco walls, steep roofs with cross gables, and turrets.
Tudor Style Homes Still Popular
by Jeanette Joy Fisher
We can't all live in castles, and most of us wouldn't really want to. They're drafty and dreary as a general rule. But if you're attracted to medieval architecture, you'll like Tudor style houses.
In modern houses, the half-timbering of Tudors is decorative rather than structural, but in medieval times, the timbers were an exposed part of what was called post and beam framing, and actually held the house up. After the posts and beams had been set in place, the spaces between them were filled in with lathe and plaster, leaving the faces of the beams exposed on the exterior.
There was a large Tudor style revival in America at the end of the nineteen century, lasting until the early 1930s. They were often built by wealthy people for their country estates, but after a while, Tudor style homes could be seen in subdivisions across the country and became more accessible to folks with more moderate incomes.
There are several prominent varieties of Tudor houses, including the Jacobean, which generally features columns and pilasters and flat roofs with parapets; the Tudor, which typically offers a considerable amount of half-timbers on the exterior, accented by pale stucco or herringbone brick.
Since there is a fair amount of complexity built into the design and decorating details of a Tudor style home, they're relatively expensive to build in comparison to more standard homes. They generally include a number of different roof angles and interesting interior designs. The roofs often feature dormers and steep pitches, making them more expensive to build and to shingle. Tudor style homes are, by design, meant to look quite different from standard construction homes, including the extensive use of stucco, brick, and wood trim, all of which are more expensive and time-consuming materials to work with.
However, the added expense is generally considered worthwhile to most Tudor home lovers, who value the craftsmanship and distinctive touches in their homes, things such as stained or beveled glass and carved woodwork and wainscoting on the interior.
There's no doubt that the Tudor style is still popular among home buyers today, but it's become less attractive to homebuilders because of the added expense and time to construct a Tudor home. However, even though new Tudors aren't being built as often as they once were, there's still a brisk market for Tudor style homes that come on the market, and those homes are generally able to command significantly higher prices than less distinctive homes in the same area.If you find yourself attracted to the Tudor design, you're certainly not alone. There's just something special about the style that speaks to our sense of history and elegance. So it appears as if the Tudor style will continue to be popular among American home buyers as long as they still come on the market from time to time.
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