colonial revival

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House Tours

When Gerry and Shirley Fisher moved to St. Louis in 1991, they had already restored two early-20th-century homes in Oklahoma City, and they were game to take on another project.

Garden Design

True Colonial-era gardens were practical, rarely ornamental, and relied on edible and medicinal plants.

House Tours

The Bellamy-Ferriday house is a prominent Georgian-period home in the Colonial Revival taste.

House Tours

Brent Hull walks you through the history of the Colonial Revival style—what makes this style unique and still popular today.

House Tours

Colonial Revival style defines this classic New England farmhouse by Patrick Ahearn in Massachusetts.

Old-House Kitchens

From cabinets and flooring to tile, lighting, and hardware, it’s the details that usher a white kitchen into the right decade. Keep in mind that white hasn’t always meant bright white, either.

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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.

Interiors & Decor

These Colonial Revival bedrooms are right out of the French stylebooks that informed high-style interiors in the colonies. Rooms are sophisticated yet homey with fabric and antiques.

A pergola leading from the street frames the symmetrical lines of the yard.

Garden Design

A soggy lawn gets a makeover to match an early 20th-century Georgian Revival home.

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.

Interior walls were removed from the room's previous configuration to open up the space and make it sunnier.

Period Bathrooms

Thanks to some lucky finds and a dose of ingenuity, a Colonial Revival bathroom is transformed into a light-filled, period-appropriate retreat.

Pergolas create an axis toward a pond in the rear garden. (Photo: Bill Ticineto)

House Tours

The sensitive addition of new architectural elements added character to a mid-1920s house of uncertain origin and pedigree. Inside and out, it’s now a Colonial Revival showplace, better than the original.

The new kitchen is in a big old room that was, improbably, long used as a garage. It’s 21' square and includes a fireplace, now restored. “We made the fireplace part of the kitchen, creating a sitting area with a couple of wing chairs,” Larry Stanley says. The old floorboards had been irreparably stained and damaged, so the floors are new. Salvaged sections of old flooring have new life as the built-in cabinet in a corner next to the fireplace. The room is simply furnished with mid-19th-century cabinets inspired by Shaker design. “We chose cherry for the cabinets because it would age to the same color as the beautiful old beams, which are chestnut treated with tung oil,” Larry explains. Natural granite countertops with a soft, honed finish complete the look.

Old House Styles

The large center-hall Georgian was built as an inn. After removing 1940s accretions and reconfiguring rooms for residential use, the current owners decorated it in fine Colonial Revival tradition.