I’m Obsessed With Building Houses
Blue Mediterranean Style Home
All my years of watching HGTV has led to this.
The past few months I’ve been spending my free time designing homes in the Sims4. I like having an outlet for my creativity, where I can turn my imagination into something visual. I’ve explored different sizes, color palettes, and styles, thinking about how I can create more visual interest in a house and maximize the usability of a space. Now, I pay attention to the houses on the side of the road as I drive by them. I take note of the way their roofs are shaped and the windowless walls that might indicate a kitchen or bathroom on the other side. In my area, there are a lot of colonial style houses, particularly Cape Cod style, which is a result of the early English settlers adapting their home styles to better suit the New England climate.
I’ve developed a deep interest in Mediterranean style homes, which are characterized by a light brick or stucco exterior, large archways, and terracotta tiled roofs. Mediterranean interior design is focused on blending indoor and outdoor living, so I’ve enjoyed playing with large pops of color to emphasize a beachy feel or the rich tones of a vineyard.
A-frame houses are a curiosity to me. I’ve seen a few of them and love the shape and large windows. True to their name, they’re shaped like the letter “A” with their roofs reaching down to their foundations. They’re often associated with vacation homes in America, but can be traced back to designs in ancient Japan and Polynesia. Interiors are typically open-planned with lofted sleeping areas.
Speaking of steep roofs, tudor-style houses can be seen in older neighborhoods as another colonial style. They’re usually a mix of brick and timber with steep roofs, predominant chimneys, and front doors that are often situated behind rounded arches. Older houses, such as tudor-style, might also be more likely to feature closed off room plans to better support heating. As a result, I like to build tudor homes that feel warm and snug.
In contrast to A-frame and tudor-style homes, ranch-style homes will typically have more shallow roofs. The term ranch-style is one I’ve heard and used a lot without fully knowing the meaning of it. I never realized that a ranch-style home is only one floor, sometimes having a basement and attached garage. Their floor plans are open and the lack of stairs makes it a good place to live for anyone with accessibility needs. It makes sense now that both my grandparents moved to ranch-style homes later in life. The ranch-style home I built was one of my favorites to put a family in because the wide open floorplan made it easy for multiple people to share space without the house feeling crowded.
I’m learning new things every day, like what different interior design styles there are and how they’ve merged together. I’ve enjoyed building gothic farmhouse living rooms, galley kitchens, and storybook offices. The more I learn about why homes are made the way they are, the more I learn what’s culturally important for people, and the more I build, the more I learn what’s important for me. I grew up in an open floorplan and live in an apartment with one now. I love my natural lighting, my abundance of plants, and my natural wood tones that were all popularized in the mid-1900s. I’m sure there’s some commentary to be had about bringing the outside into our homes as technology becomes more ubiquitous, but that’s another blog post for another time. This one is about pretty homes.
