Front Porch Designs

Free front porch designs, great ideas for porches and decks including tips on overall design and style of porch furniture with accompanying pictures and photos.

Craftsman Style Porch Designs

¶ In these days when the question of light and air is of so much importance in the planning of the home, the tendency is more and more toward the provision of ample room for as much open air life as possible. In all the Craftsman houses, as well as in the less modern homes of other styles, the veranda, whether open in summer or enclosed for a sun room in winter, is one of the prominent features. Partly for convenience in enclosing with glass if desired, but mainly to insure the pleasant sense of privacy that means such a large part of the comfort of home, these porches or verandas are usually recessed so that they are partially protected by the walls of the house and are further sheltered by the copings and flower boxes. In a front porch which must serve for a sitting room as well as an entrance, the coping, surmounted by flower boxes, acts as a screen and with the aid of a generous growth of vines, serves as a very satisfactory shelter from the street. Where there is also a garden veranda it can be made into a charming outdoor living or dining room both for summer and for mild days in winter by being so recessed and protected that it is like a summer house or an outdoor room always open to the sun and air.

Porch Furniture

¶ Outdoor living and dining rooms, to be homelike and comfortable, should be equipped with all that is necessary for daily use so as to avoid the carrying back and forth of tables, chairs and the like, as when the veranda is used only occasionally. It goes without saying that the furniture should be plain and substantial, fitted for the rugged outdoor life and able to stand the weather. Indian rugs or Navajo blankets lend a touch of comfort and cheer, and the simple designs and primitive colors harmonize as well with trees and vines and the open sky as they do with their native wigwams. Willow chairs and settles (see pictures of willow furniture) seem to belong naturally to life in the garden, and with a few light tables, a book rack or two and plenty of hammocks, the veranda has all the sense of peace and permanency that should belong to a living room, whether indoors or out, that is habitually used by the family.

Front Porch Designs
Porch that not only serves as a desirable entrance but greatly increases the structural interest of the front of the house. The windows on either side project slightly from the wall in a shallow bay and the entrance door with its casements on either side projects still farther. The porch is comparatively narrow and the roof is supported by two heavy pillars of wood painted white, which serve to give accent to the darker tones of the shingles, exterior woodwork and stone foundation. The walls are sheathed with cypress shingles that are oiled and left to weather, and the woodwork of the roof, door and window framings and balustrade is in a darker tone of brown. The use of spindles for exterior woodwork is shown in the balustrade.

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