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Some of the Cape Cod homes are also large enough to accommodate garages and extended master bedrooms and baths for a larger family. Using natural wood roof shingles and siding on the facade can enhance the look while catching the eye. Also, using a lighter-hued covering can make it look more bigger and brighter. Nowadays, original Capes like those have sometimes been added onto so often that they have a kind of “Russian doll” look, Seifter says. With modest square footage that typically ranges from 1,200 to 1,800 square feet, the Cape Cod is smaller than most homes built today, which average around 2,300 square feet. The style fell out of popularity temporarily but had a resurgence post World War ll, known as the Cape Cod Revival.
Georgian and Federal Details
Julia is a part of the content marketing team and enjoys writing about real estate and design trends. Perhaps best described as the quintessential American summer house, the homes evoke daydreams of slower days and beachside New England retreats. To learn more about the look, AD spoke with Wright as well as Peter McDonald, an architect based in Cape Cod, about the unique house style. Since Cape Cod house style is typically free of any ornamentation, it’s easy to write it off as bland. But, as architect Kevin Lichten argues, its simplicity has made this a lasting home trend.
Adding Dormers
The final addition to the stark design of the Cape Cod style house is the front porch, which has become as traditional an element as the weathered shingle siding or the dish antennae. An unusual feature of this home, besides the slate roof and brick exterior, is the small, single window we see to the left of the door. As the symmetry is thrown off by this opening, this one window may be located in a stairway leading to a full second floor. On a grand scale, Victorian houses are instantly recognizable for their multi-colored exteriors, turrets, gables, gingerbread details, and substantial wraparound porches. In contemporary design, Victorians work well with Boho decor since both include lots of details and multiple colors and patterns.
Three-quarter Cape Cod house style
Still, simplicity remains a visual hallmark of this somewhat minimalist but undeniably cozy home style. Patterned brickwork, diamond-paned windows, and a slate roof can give a 20th century Cape Cod the flavor of a Tudor Cottage home. At first glance, you might not think of this house as a Cape Cod—especially because of the brick exterior. Many designers use the Cape Cod as a starting point, embellishing the style with features from other times and places.
Cape Cod House Floor Plan
Cape Cod-style houses can come in many shapes and sizes—the charming, modest dimensions of a half Cape make ideal starter homes for many people, while others may aspire to the grander proportions of a full Cape. A half Cape has its front door on one side of the facade, with two windows on the other side (this is also known as a “single Cape”). A full Cape, on the other hand, has a door in the center with two windows flanking it on each side.
Like many of the style's other characteristics, Cape Cod homes typically feature neutral exterior color schemes. The original shake shingles are often left to weather gray, while other Cape Cod homes sport painted shingles. Most of the color schemes, like those of Colonial-style homes, are very neutral and austere. Historically, Cape Cod houses were modestly-sized homes with one to one-and-a-half stories.
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Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Cape Cod Houses
These small changes can update and modernize your Cape Cod from traditional to contemporary. In keeping with a more traditional style, you can find floor plans with the front entry or foyer that opens onto a stairway, with a bedroom, study, or office on the right side and a formal living room on the left. A traditional Cape Cod layout includes one main living space with the common room also used as the family or living room.
Cape Cod House Sizes
As Wright explains, Cape Cod houses are often imagined as the classic American beach house. Traditionally, they’re small, single- or one-and-a-half-story homes with steeply pitched, side-gabled roofs, central chimneys, dormer windows, and clad in shingles. “It’s got either shingle siding or white clabbered siding, a single story in the front, a central front door, and a big roof sometimes with dormers,” Wright says. Often built around simple, rectangular floor plans, their shape is nearly identical to the silhouette a child might come up with if prompted to draw a house.
Though Cape Cod cottages may, at times, come with the connotation of old money or coastal elite homeowners, they didn’t start like this. “The first settlers came from Plymouth and were just trying to survive,” McDonald explains. Back in the 17th century, when colonists first came to what would become the United States, the rocky terrain and cold winters didn’t make the New England coast an ideal place to live. “It was very cold in the winters, beautiful in the summers, [so] they had to make all their money in the summers and then survive through the winter,” Wright says.
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When early settlers came to the United States, they decided to model their new abodes after their half-timbered homes from England — with a few upgrades to suit their new surroundings. Dating back to New England during the 17th century, this classic style proves that keeping it simple is anything but boring. In fact, it’s not too hard to see how Cape Cod homes have deftly surpassed the test of time. Overall, the calmness and coziness of these homes draw innumerable homeowners each year. The distinctive character of these homes marks as an important style of design in the history that continues to lead for the generations to come. Cape Cod homes have an unfinished or partially opened crawl space underneath the house, more commonly lined with stone, brick or brick veneer, as specified.
Even though the styles were separated by about a century, they still share several commonalities, including a conspicuous lack of exterior details. A modestly scaled interior meant that original Cape Cod homeowners had to maximize whatever details they included in their homes. To gain sunlight whenever possible, windows were often extended very high, often up to the roofline. A lack of resources, time, and money were some of the factors that originally made the intimate size of Cape Cod-style houses so popular. The style has since been adapted to today's tastes and lifestyles, but many of its simplistic charms remain. A close relative of the Colonial-style homes scattered across the East Coast and the South, Cape Cod houses were an economical answer to Americans' desires to be homeowners.
Colonial homes are historically considered an offshoot of the original Cape Cod homes and are usually bigger. They feature similar rectangular floor plans, though they often include at least two stories. Aside from the square footage, colonial homes typically employ gambrel roofs—a main feature of Dutch colonials—while Cape Cod houses traditionally make use of gable roofs. Colonial houses may also include more ornamentation, like the use of columns, which is less common on traditional Cape Cod homes.
The structure of a Cape Cod makes it easy to add to another section of the house or connect to a garage or carriage house without losing the home’s iconic style. In these cases, homeowners have the option to extend the back of the home or add another story for additional space. For a Cape Cod with an attic converted to living space, the attic runs the risk of not being well insulated, making the home more susceptible to ice dams, which can cause interior leaking or mold.
And if you can’t decide between the two, a three-quarter Cape is for you, with two windows on one side of the door and one window on the other. A Cape Cod-style house with an open-floor plan eliminates most non-structural walls to create an open and airy flow through the kitchen, dining area, and living room. If the homeowner chooses to add a wing or two and still retain the Cape Cod structure, they can extend a single-story off one or both sides of the home. Occasionally, such extensions may not be possible on a narrow lot, and the home can only be built up to add more living space. The interior color palette of a traditional Cape Cod home mirrors the exterior environment, often using pastel colors to mimic the sky, grass, water, and sun to add warmth and charm to the interior. Modern Cape Cod interior design opts for a white color palette to add light to the home and create a larger feel in the space.
The relatively low ceilings made it easier to heat the buildings during the winter. Today, the house style's sturdy, practical appearance maintains its simple appeal. As its name suggests, Cape Cod house style is most common in Massachusetts and the greater New England region. While these types of residences are still be found in the Midwest and along the west coast, they might look different from their traditional, New England counterparts.
Homey and effortlessly appealing, the Cape Cod house style is the definition of cookie-cutter comfort-food architecture that has stood the test of time. Like the homes at Plimoth Plantation, the landscape of the traditional Cape Cod home often includes the picket fence or gate. Many of the homes of the past have been modified through architectural details or building additions. Exploring the meaning of architectural style can be challenging in a country like the United States with a population of diverse backgrounds. On the colonial East Coast, Cape Cod homes were heated by a single fireplace with a chimney rising from the center of the house.
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