What to Look for in a Florida Style Home

Building Somewhere Warm? Choose a Home That’s Adapted to the Climate and Environment

 

Perhaps rivaling California with its diverse home designs, the Florida region is lined with homes built in a variety of styles that showcase its heritage. Strongly influenced by the Spanish and the architecture of the Deep South, Florida house plans range from Mediterranean-inspired mansions and ranches to Tidewater houses, “Cracker” cottages, and two-story beachfront homes. 

 

Features of the Florida Home Style

Whatever their architectural designs, Florida homes are built to allow comfort and ease in the sweltering heat and harsh winds. With the hot, humid weather in the state, most Florida house plans come with shaded porches, screened rear patios, high ceilings, plenty of windows, which allow cool breezes into the home, and usually no basements.

Here are some of the characteristic features of a Florida-style home: 

 

1.  Covered front and rear porches

 

2.  Low-slope red tile roofs, especially on homes with Mediterranean influences ...

 

 . . . or metal roofs on other houses.

 

 

3.  Stucco exteriors

 

4.  Lots of windows, which allow ocean breezes in to cool off the home

 

5.  Verandas, typically built on the second floor of the home  

 

6.  Open floor plans that allow a smooth flow from indoors to outdoors

 

7.  Screened-in pool

 

A Look at the Varied Florida Home Styles

From Pensacola in the north to Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, the Everglades, and the Keys, there is an extensive display of architectural styles in Florida homes.

 

1.  Spanish/Mediterranean

All around Florida, you will find traces of its centuries-old Spanish heritage in the designs of residences and public buildings. A modern Mediterranean style lives on in a majority of the homes, with their stucco/brick exteriors, low-pitch roofs with terra-cotta tiles, and arched entrances and windows. These homes also feature courtyards, rear patios, decks, and screened-in pools. Like most Florida homes, they have open floor plans—and an abundance of windows and doors that bridge the indoors with the natural outdoor landscapes.   

 

2.  Mission Style

Akin to the Spanish/Mediterranean design is the Spanish Mission style, which is also prevalent—perhaps more so—in California and the Southwest. It shares these characteristics: exterior walls of stucco, red-tile roofs, and arched doorways and windows. Unlike the Mediterranean style, the Mission design may feature a parapet or a square bell tower.

 

3.  Tidewater, or Low Country, Style

Basically, two-story homes are elevated on piers or piles, Tidewater, or Low Country; home plans are common in coastal areas like Florida, where the weather gets hot, humid, and wet. They have wide, covered porches and decks that often wrap around both floors of the home. Again, there are plenty of windows to allow the cool breezes inside. Living and social spaces are located on the main and upper levels, with the ground level used for parking, storage, or bonus space.

 

4.  Old Florida “Cracker” Cottage—Built in the Deep South during the mid-1800s to the early 1900s by English, Scottish, and Irish settlers in Florida and Georgia called "Crackers" for their boastful, wise-cracking ways, the Cracker cottage is making a comeback. Its rustic charm and artless but effective design are attractive to modern developers. Originally an unsophisticated one-story wooden shelter with a metal roof, the Cracker home was constructed on a pile of rocks and bricks to raise it off the ground. To protect themselves from the heat and wind, the pioneers built wide covered porches and windows around the home for ventilation and shade—simple and energy-efficient design, basic principles that are being revived today to recapture the homey and affordable style of the old Cracker cottage.

 

 

 

 

If you're ready to be charmed by the South, Florida’s diverse architectural home styles just may captivate you! 

 

Footnote: The lead image (upper) in this article is from a 1-story, 4-bedroom Florida/Mediterranean style home. For more details, view: (Plan #190-1005)