An iced cottage topped with gumdrops and peppermint candies is likely your first thought when you hear someone mention a gingerbread house.
But a gingerbread-style home is also a beautiful architectural style with deep historic roots. You’ll know a gingerbread house when you spy one, notes Beverly Solomon of the eponymous design firm.
“They’re the epitome of cute—I like to refer to these homes as ‘architectural lace,'” she says.
For more on this over-the-top home style, including the history, where you’ll find them, and what it’s like to live in and maintain a gingerbread-style home, read on.
The history of gingerbread homes
Gingerbread-style homes grew in popularity during the Victorian era of architecture in this country, which spanned the late 1830s up until 1900. And it was these homes that were often decorated with delicate ornamentation common to the era’s design.
“The Victorian period in the U.S. was a time of great expansion of wealth, innovation, and an emerging middle class,” explains Solomon. “And this meant that average people wanted their homes to have those extra frills, just like their clothes, which had the same touches to indicate they were moving up in the world.”
But the gingerbread style can also trace its history to Haiti. Architects from this island nation traveled to Paris and then brought home the bold color combinations and decorative scrollwork to use on local residences and municipal buildings.
Key features of a gingerbread home
A gingerbread home isn’t its own style in the way Edwardian and Craftsman styles houses are. Instead, the hallmarks of the gingerbread style—think fancy millwork, scroll designs, steeply pitched rooflines, and lacelike cutouts and patterns—are most often seen grafted onto other architectural styles, notably Victorian-era homes.
Gingerbread houses are also known for their unusual paint shades (think teal, maroon, mustard yellow, and bright white) that were used to highlight the eaves and arches that line the rooftops, porches, and windows.
“A gingerbread-style home is truly special,” says Lacey Power, an associate broker with Premier Sotheby’s International Realty in Asheville, NC. “It’s not a standard cookie-cutter house, but one that evokes a magical emotion and whimsical flare.”
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