What style is my house? How to date a building

You can best work out what style your house is by looking at four things in turn: the roof, the windows, the façade material and the decoration. A säteri roof (a Swedish manor-house roof) points to the 17th or 18th century, a mansard roof to the 18th century, the late 19th century or the 1910s, a flat roof with horizontal bands of windows to Functionalism after 1930 and raw concrete to the post-war period. Add the clues together, because houses are rebuilt and styles are borrowed, and then check the year of construction in the municipal archive of building-permit drawings.

Facts

Start from the top: the roof

The roof is visible from afar and changes less often than windows and façades. An ordinary gable roof says little, since it has been built in every age. A hipped roof, which slopes in all four directions, is common on 18th-century manor houses and on villas from the 1910s and 1920s. A säteri roof, with a low vertical wall and small windows between two roof slopes, is the manor-house roof of the Swedish Great Power period and the 18th century; Riddarhuset (the House of Nobility) in Stockholm has one of the most famous. The mansard roof, with a steep lower and a shallow upper slope, arrived in the 18th century and returned both in the 'stone city' and in villas around 1910.

A flat roof on a residential building almost always means Functionalism, that is, the 1930s or later, and a shallow monopitch roof often belongs to the 1960s and 1970s. The roofing gives more clues: shingles and turf belong to the older countryside, clay tiles to towns and southern Sweden, and copper that has weathered green to churches and fine civic buildings. All six basic forms are drawn in the guide to roof types.

The windows reveal a lot

Small windows with many panes, in even rows and symmetrically placed, belong to the 18th century and the Gustavian period. In the 19th century the panes became larger as glass became cheaper, and cross-framed windows with four casements became common. Around the turn of the 20th century came windows with small-paned upper sections and one large pane below, preferably of different sizes on the same façade, and in Art Nouveau rounded bay windows.

Functionalism introduced horizontal bands of windows and corner windows that wrap around the corner of the house, a sure sign of the period after 1930. In the 1950s picture windows became common in villas: a large, undivided pane between two narrow windows that can be opened. Remember that windows are what is most often replaced. If the windows do not match the rest of the house, it is likely that the windows are the younger part.

Material and decoration

Houses of horizontal log, often with Falun red paint, were the way of building in the countryside well into the 19th century. From the mid-19th century timber-frame construction with panelling became common, and towards the end of the century 'carpenter's joy': fretwork trim, brackets and bargeboards in light colours. Hand-made, uneven brick points to the period before 1900 or to National Romanticism around 1910, whereas machine-made yellow brick is typical of the 1950s and 1960s. Raw concrete and concrete façade panels belong to the post-war period, and tall buildings of solid timber to the 21st century. The history of materials in Sweden can be found in the section on materials in the basics.

Decoration is a measure of time. A lot of ornament in render, stone or cast iron, with pediments over the windows and rusticated ground floors, is typical of the 'stone city' of 1880–1910. National Romanticism has native motifs such as animals and crowns, and the classicism of the 1920s a restrained, light decoration with urns, columns and pilasters. Between 1930 and 1975 building was almost entirely without ornament. The parts of a classical façade are named in the guide to the parts of a façade.

A quick key to Swedish houses

The Swedish Great Power period, 17th century: säteri roofs, thick walls, symmetrical stone houses and manor houses. The Gustavian period, around 1770–1810: light, simple and symmetrical houses, often in timber made to look like render, with broken roofs. The Karl Johan period, around 1810–1850: austere, classical houses with a low gable roof and clear cornices, as at Rosendal. The 'stone city', around 1870–1910: five-storey buildings in render and brick with rich decoration, and in the country 'carpenter's joy'.

National Romanticism and Art Nouveau, around 1900–1920: brick, granite, steep roofs and towers, or soft lines and bay windows. Swedish Grace, 1920s: restrained classicism, often pale render, hipped or broken roofs and slender details, like Villa Snellman. Functionalism (funkis), 1930–1950: flat roofs, white render, bands of windows, corner windows and slender iron balcony railings. The Record Years, 1950–1975: yellow or red brick, concrete, slab blocks and villas with picture windows. After 1975 come the playful borrowings of Postmodernism and then the timber, glass and large windows of the present day.

Alterations, borrowings and the archive

A house can have several ages. A log cabin from the 18th century may have been given panelling and new windows in the 1890s and an extension in the 1970s. The richly decorated façades of the 'stone city' were often smoothed over during renovations in the 1950s and 1960s. And styles are borrowed: a mansard roof on a villa does not mean that the house dates from the 18th century. Look therefore for what is hardest to change, such as the basic form of the house, the shape of the roof and the thickness of the walls.

Once you have a guess, you can often get it confirmed. Municipal building committees have archives of building-permit drawings, in larger towns often from the end of the 19th century, and old maps and aerial photographs show when a house appears. If you want to train your eye, you can practise styles in the app or compare with the profiles of the styles; the Swedish timeline is in Swedish architectural history.

Quick clues

Exercise

A rendered house with a flat roof, horizontal bands of windows and a window that wraps around the corner. When was it probably built?