Architectural Styles

What is a Colonial home?

A buyer-focused breakdown of the style's origins, sub-types, maintenance demands and purchase considerations.

What is a Cape Cod-style house?

From colonial origins to modern renovation costs, here's what to evaluate before making an offer.

What is a bungalow home?

From Craftsman porches to century-old wiring, here's what defines this single-story style and what owning one actually costs.

Driven by nostalgia, Colonial Revival homes are everywhere

But the varied, often hybrid, style can be difficult to pick out.

The ranch home would like your attention, but it might need some work

These long, single-level homes embodied easy living without aesthetic risk.

How the hopeful (if rare) International Style came to be

Houses built in this blocky, stark style are not the easiest structures to maintain.

How Federal-style architecture came to define a new nation's residential landscape

The aesthetic captured the hearts and minds of Americans and their presidents

The US has Carpenter Gothic design to thank for some of its gingerbread cottages

The 19th-century movement offered smaller homes with lots of icing-like details.

For some buyers, Georgian homes offer lasting appeal

These rational, highly symmetrical homes were popular in the 18th century.

What makes an Italianate home such a chef's kiss

These homes are known for ornate cornices, bracketed roofs and narrow windows.