If there is one thing that can make your home stand apart from the masses it is a great exterior appearance. These days, beautiful looking homes are a dime-a-dozen, but truly extraordinary ones are actually quite a bit harder to find. One architectural aspect that many of these homes have in common is the use of columns. Columns are a great way to make your house look special because they are associated with many great architectural structures. Places like The White House, The Lincoln Memorial, countless town halls and courthouses throughout the world – all of these have columns. You can easily add these to your home as well, thus enhancing its beauty immensely. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of home columns to choose from.
Exterior Home Columns
The most common type of columns for homes are exterior home columns.
These are the ones that everyone will see from the outside. If you are thinking about incorporating these columns into your home’s exterior, there are a few things that you should know. First, there are two main types of columns – those that are built to support the weight of what is above them, and those that are not. The structural integrity of these two types is completely different. The first type is very strong and solid, and the latter is mostly just for decoration. If you want to have weight bearing columns in your home, you will need to include these in your architectural plan.
Many homes have wooden posts that are used to support the patio roof. If you don’t like the look of a square piece of wood, you can get a column that fits right over it. This effectively masks the wood inside and shows the beautiful home column. The good thing about this type of column is that it can be installed after the house is already built, or during a renovation. The original wood post will still do its job of supporting the roof.
Interior Home Columns
If you really want to give your home’s interior a special look, using interior home columns is an excellent way to accomplish this task. Interior columns will help make a spacious home look like a stately mansion inside. There are a number of choices as to the materials to be used. The most common ones are wood and composite. Depending on the type of wood columns used, they can give a home either a rustic, ski lodge look or an elegant, old fashioned feel. Composite home columns on the other hand will have the appearance of granite, marble, or other stones. Others are designed to be a solid color such as white, which is probably the most popular color for columns. In addition to wood and composite columns, there are also aluminum ones. Aluminum is a good choice in some areas since it doesn’t rust or rot like wood or other metals, and it is structurally strong enough to support weight.
Styles of Home Columns
No matter which material that you choose your columns to be made from, there is another choice you will need to make as well. You will need to decide how the exterior will look. Any home column can be made either round or square. In addition, round or square columns can be tapered so that they are thicker at the base than the top. Either one of these styles can have grooves running vertically as well.
As if there weren’t enough options to choose from already, you will have to decide on one final thing before you can order your decorative home columns. You can choose a style for your column. What I mean by this is that the top of the column usually has a style to it. There are Roman columns, Greek columns, Tuscan columns, just to name a few. Each is designed to look like the architectural style that its name suggests. Of course, if you’d rather not have any fancy things on the top of your column, you can get it plain as well.
You might be wondering how columns are installed in the home. While it is possible to assemble them on site, the vast majority of home columns are made by manufacturers that specialize in this area. Most of the bigger companies have lots of options available, and are used to producing columns and shipping them to homes. You can try looking in your area for local producers, but you might find that it is cheaper to get them made farther away and shipped to you.
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Tags: columns, exterior home columns, home column, home columns, interior home columns, wood columns