Custom French Provincial Homes

Symmetry and proportion are the key elements to a true French provincial home, and maybe throw in a steep roof pitch. People often feel that French Provincial homes are extravagant and decorative, but that’s not the case. In fact, most French Provincial homes are relatively plain with limited decorations or adornments, maybe some shutters or wrought iron or simple detail in the brickwork or render to highlight or accentuate the windows, doors and an overall shape and roofline that is balanced and proportional. It’s often the space between the elements that is the feature, like distances between windows, between windows and the ground, and between windows and the eave.

You also have the shape and proportion of the windows and doors themselves which needs to work with the overall height and width of the whole building. That’s where the decoration and adornment comes in – maybe some mouldings around the windows if the gap between them is a smidge too large, or perhaps shutters if it’s very large, or else a nice sill moulding can help lengthen a window. Corbelling or Coining can help narrow the building visually, just like plinths can enhance the height. But with custom French provincial homes, we don’t need to stick to the rules unless we want to, and that’s the advantage – we can mix styles, periods and genres to our client’s tastes and to suit their site and budget. If you like French Provincial but want to amp up the decoration and adornments, our modern French provincial home builder can do that. If you like columns and other Italianate features, we can include them. Give our luxury French provincial home builder a call and we can talk about what you like, what you don’t like and how it can work on your site.

There is no clear answer, as the French Provincial style encompassed a huge range from very basic simple country cottages that may have had only 2 or 3 rooms, to huge homes on large estates that may have had hundreds of rooms. In principle, French Provincial homes are simple in their design with a smaller number of rooms but larger rooms with tall ceilings and grand spaces. They are not usually overloaded with features and typically only one or two features would be the focus of the design, like a stair, or a large fireplace or some views to a pool, garden or courtyard. They are highly family focused, with large kitchens and meal spaces, family spaces, and sensibly sized formal rooms like lounge rooms, studies or libraries. The home must have beautiful but highly functional spaces.

For our French provincial home builders in Melbourne to design a beautiful French Provincial home, we simply need to understand a little about you and your family and tastes as well as how you want the house to work on the site.

The French Provincial style covered such a large range of homes from apartments to castles so there is no real limit to the size of the block you need to build one. However, this question always comes back to what type of French Provincial home you would be happy with. You might like a simple 2 level box with a front door and some French doors on the ground floor and two smaller windows above, with a dash of wrought iron and a simple mould around the door and windows – perfect for a site as narrow as 4m. But as nice as they are, most people our luxury French provincial home builder talks to aren’t showing us that sort of French Provincial home as part of their wish list, and generally they want to draw inspiration from larger grander homes of the style. If this is the case, then the wider the better, and if we’re incorporating a double car garage to the front of the house, then 15m is about the narrowest to work with that doesn’t require some concessions.

It’s also helpful in your own mind and to us as French home builders and designers to be realistic in your expectations. Our modern French provincial home builder is limited by council rules and town planning regulations that restrict the height and width of French provincial homes in Melbourne suburbs. That makes it very hard to replicate a photo you may have of a home that’s 50m wide and has 5m high ceilings on a 600m2 site in Boroondara. But we can certainly draw inspiration from it, work with you to get the proportions right, and include the elements that you like the best and that will work with the scale we have. That’s the key – work with the scale, as it always comes back to proportion.