colonial

Products of the Week

ATLANTA 4X6 POST CAP - WHITE PYRAMID TOP

American owned and operated manufacturer of deck and fence post caps.

Bring beauty and value your home with heirloom-quality REAL wood doors by Vintage Doors. Meticulously handmade by expert craftsmen in your exact size and style—to be loved and respected for generations, just like the olden days. Hand-crafted wood product line includes: screen doors, storm doors, Dutch doors, French doors, louver doors, pantry doors, interior doors, exterior doors, entrance units, three season porch enclosures, pet doors, arch top doors, round top doors, custom doors and more.

Kitchen Appliances

Cast-iron, nickel-trimmed Victorian cookstoves with the convenience of the 21st century.

Interiors & Decor

Appreciating an iconic Colonial design vocabulary.

The patriotic Little Corner Store represents a more recent period: rationing during World War II.

Northeastern Historic Sites

This living history museum is the heart of Portsmouth, New Hampshire's historic city center.

Web Exclusives

Wondering if you'd like a Colonial, Victorian, bungalow, or modern? Try this quiz from the editors of Old House Journal magazine.

Early Lighting: Colonial-1860

Authentic Designs builds historically accurate period lighting fixtures by hand in our rural Vermont workshops. Our bespoke designs include Colonial, Federalist and other Early American designs, Victorian, Art Deco, Arts & Crafts and Mid-Century.

The room mixes painted and unpainted wood for an evolved feel that looks more like furniture than a modern kitchen. The beams were salvaged.

Old-House Kitchens

Inside an addition to an old house in Pennsylvania, this new but timeless kitchen is a simple room with all of its details well-considered.

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Interior Paints & Stenciling

Prussian blue gets all the ink, but true Colonial-era colors, although diverse, have an earthy quality.

Digital

E-newsletters

House Tours

A homeowner with a penchant for early antiques invites a preservation consultant in to help her unscramble a house initially built with architectural salvage.

Furnishings: This reproduction chair is the only Revival piece in this typical room. The rest is a mix; note the Moorish table and a Victorian side chair reupholstered in chintz. (All illustrations based on interior views after actual period photographs annotated by William Seale.)

Old House Styles

The timeless approach to decorating that’s also known as Traditional.

This fireplace, with its pine paneling and beehive oven, is in the 1760s Hearth Room. Herbs and yarrow from the autumn garden are hung to dry. Sprigs of winterberry holly give a pop of festive red against rustic wood and pewter plates. This holly variety is native to Connecticut.

House Tours

Connecticut’s Phelps–Hatheway House has both Colonial and high-style Federal rooms. During the winter holidays, the house is appropriately decorated with balsam and fir, pinecones and berries.

The original house was built in the Georgian style of the mid-1700s; rebuilding and additions date to the 1790s, 1870s, the early 20th century, and 1990.

House Tours

The preservation of an 18th-century house in Maine has been life-changing for a couple who found their best possible place.

A very plain entry door was replaced with this Colonial Revival surround and batten door.

House Tours

The keeping room of old became the family-friendly living room; a sunroom and electric kitchen fed 20th-century desires. Like the original Colonial dwellings he interpreted, Royal Barry Wills houses have stood the test of time. This one in North Carolina has been beautifully restored.

House Tours

Nestled into a New Hampshire hillside, the handsome Colonial fits right in—though it was built in 2006, from an authentic house plan.

Windows, Doors & Shutters

Whether the house is a Colonial or Romantic Revival variation, shutters help add a touch of elegance while enhancing color (or contrast) to the exterior.