Why choose Historic Design Consulting to help you select historic paint colors for your Victorian era home or business?

For more information about historic paint colors for your Victorian or Arts and Crafts era home or business, please visit the Historic Design Consulting Website today!

There is an abundance of colorists, consultants and other professionals who specialize in Victorian-era paint colors and ornament for historic homes.  This can make selecting a consultant who is right for you and your historic architecture difficult considering their varying levels of training, education and expertise.  Historic Design's color consultants, however, have a unique background which includes academic training in architectural history and building conservation as well as hands-on experience in restoration which distinguishes us from others in the field.  

Unlike colorists whose backgrounds are in decoration and design, Historic Design's consultants are grounded in a graduate level education in history and architectural history.  Like any good historian, we start our research with primary sources and period color palettes rather than rely on modern authors and paint manufacturers to tell us how people painted their homes and businesses.  We know which pigments painters used and when. We know how architectural styles and aesthetic ideals evolved during the 19th century and how color palettes reflected these changes. We know that colors used on an 1850s Italianate home might not be appropriate for a 1905 Colonial Revival or Shingle Style home.    

19th century card with paint chips from Lion Brand.  Historic Design
 Consulting has a collection of primary sources like period color
samples which we use to select our period-correct color palettes.

In short, we use the same materials and literature that painters used in the 19th century to write custom color reports for our clients.

John W. Masury's 1881 book on house painting.  Period literature offers
an instructive account of 19th century painting practice and theory.  

Our expertise in architectural history is complimented by our training in building conservation. Building conservation is the discipline of preserving and restoring historic architecture. This includes a thorough knowledge of historic building materials and construction methods as well as the best practices to preserve them. 19th and early 20th buildings present challenges that are unique to historic architecture and a background in building conservation is necessary to preserve these building's distinguishing characteristics.  

Historic Design Consulting has a library of period photos which we use to determine correct
color placement. 

Historic Design Consulting also benefits from hands-on experience in building maintenance and restoration.   Although academic training is important, there is no substitute for actual experience in paint preparation, window restoration and building repair.  Our expertise in modern maintenance methods as well as 19th century carpentry and house joinery using Civil War era tools and techniques makes Historic Design Consulting stand apart from other consultants and colorists.  

To get your own historic paint color report for your Victorian era house or business, visit our web page at www.historic-design.com and click on the Paint Colors button in the Our Services Menu.

The Second Empire Style

Many 19^th century building styles, including the Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival and Italianate, were inspired by historic precedents and featured antique details such as lancet arches, brackets and classical architraves.  Around the middle of the century, however, some Americans opted for a more “modern” style which emulated fashionable designs current in Paris.  This modern style, called the Second Empire, proved to be especially popular in the Midwest and Northeast following the Civil War and many examples remain in small towns and large cities alike.

One outstanding example is the Early Mansion, a 1875 house built by D. Carr Early in Sac City, IA.  A native of Freeburg, OH, Early pre-empted a quarter section of land near Sac City in 1857 and prospered due to his investments in a local bank and railroad.   He built a grand home in the fashionable Second Empire style and had its furnishings delivered via ox cart from Fort Dodge, IA, which was 60 miles distant across the open prairie.  

The 1875 Early Mansion in Sac City, IA.

   What distinguishes the Second Empire?  First and foremost is the mansard roof.  This dual-pitched roof design, named after the 17^th century French architect François Mansart (1598-1666), allowed more efficient use of attic space.  The design proved so practical that many existing buildings with traditional roofs were remodeled with the mansard.  High style examples of the Second Empire often feature towers, elaborate molded hoods over windows and brackets along the cornice. Despite being considered a “modern” style, its detailing (apart from the mansard roof) closely resembles the picturesque Italianate style popular since the 1840s.  

Closeup showing the elaborate porch, brackets and window hoods.

Another fine Iowa example of the Second Empire style is the Harker House in Storm Lake, IA.  This cottage was built by 1875 by J. M. Russell for $500 dollars.  Although smaller than the Early Mansion, the Harker House features many of the same design elements.  The Harker House has been preserved as a house museum with many of its original furnishings thanks to efforts of Russell's granddaughter Nora Harker.  

The 1875 Harker House in Storm Lake, IA. 

You might ask "What exactly does the name Second Empire mean?"  The Second Empire refers to the regime of Napoleon III who ruled France between 1852 and 1870 (the First Empire was, of course, the regime of his uncle Napoleon Bonaparte).  One major project of Napoleon III was the modernization of medieval Paris into a modern capital city capable of supporting its burgeoning population.   Napoleon III tasked Baron Haussmann with renovating the old city and, over the following decades, virtually all of medieval Paris was demolished and replaced with the grand boulevards and buildings we recognize today. The design for many of the buildings built in Haussmann's new Paris was based on Renaissance precedents and incorporated the Mansard roof. The Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855 and the International Exhibition in London in 1867 popularized the new style and it was to become popular in style books in the United States.

To visit the Harken House, check out their web page  or visit their Facebook page. 

  

       

Maintenance Plans and Report for Historic Homes and Businesses

For more information about maintenance plans for your Victorian or Arts and Crafts era home or business, please visit the Historic Design Consulting Website today!

Is your paint peeling or plaster cracked? We can help!

Is your Victorian-era storefront or Queen Anne home looking a little worse for the wear?  You can take some comfort because help is one the way! Historic Design Consulting is very happy to announce a new  service for owners of historic homes and businesses: Maintenance plans and reports.  As historic buildings age they present special challenges to their owners.  Exposure to the elements and years of wear and tear not only affect the appearance of a building but can also compromise its structural integrity.  While some deterioration is inevitable over time, decay can accelerate if a building does not undergo regular maintenance.  Deferred maintenance can lead to substantial problems while emergency repairs made during a crisis or critical failure can alter or irreparably damage  historic materials.   Inappropriate repairs and replacement are especially important in designated historic districts and down towns because the integrity of an historic buildings is an important factor its eligibility for many tax credits and grants. Furthermore, regular maintenance is far more cost effective than the replacement of deteriorated, historic features.  

Historic Design offers two maintenance services: Maintenance plans and maintenance reports.  Maintenance plans are comprehensive documents describing the upkeep of an entire building and include care recommendations, a maintenance schedule and step-by-step instructions showing you what to do, how to do it and when.  A maintenance report focuses on a particular issue with precise instructions.  Typical issues include:

• Care of windows and doors
• Repair of cracking plaster on walls and ceilings
• Deteriorated or dirty finishes on mill work and molding  
• Recommendations for interior and exterior painting
• Care of masonry, bricks and stonework
• Refinishing front doors

For more information about Historic Design's maintenance plans and reports, please visit our website and www.historic-design.com.  If you have questions about a particular maintenance issue on your historic home or business, click on the "Contact Us" link to send us a message.

Painted Floors in the Victorian Home

Late 19th century card of sample
floor colors from the New England
Paint Company

For more information about historic paint colors for your Victorian or Arts and Crafts era home or business, please visit the Historic Design Consulting webpage today.

Painted floors were common in American homes throughout the 19th century. Durable paints would seal soft pine flooring making them less liable to stain and easier to clean.  An 1850 edition of Miss Leslie's Lady's House Book recommends cleaning heavily soiled, common pine floors using:
        

   "an old tin pan with some gray sand in it; and after soaping the brush, rub on it some sand also."

Abrasive sand or pumice could remove stains but would also erode the soft, unpainted floor boards. Since painted and sealed floors would not absorb grease or stains, they could be easily cleaned by wiping or gently brushing with warm soapy water. 

Commercial, ready-made floor paints were made durable and glossy by the addition of resins that were otherwise used to make varnishes. These resins, including copal and colophony, were soluble in boiled linseed oil and turpentine and were added to oil paint to provided the hard, glossy coat.  Painters and homeowners also used regular, home-mixed oil paint and then applied a protective topcoat of varnish.  Alvin Wood Chase's 1890 receipt book (or recipe book as we say today) Dr. Chase's third, last and complete receipt book and household physician suggests: 

"Paint the whole floor with a mixture of much boiled oil and little ochre for the first coat: then after it is well dried, give two more coats of much ochre and little oil; and finally finish with a coat of first-rate copal varnish.  It is extremely durable for floors, windows, or outside, such as verandas, porticoes and the like." 

Painted bedroom floors from the 1855
Folsom House, Taylor's Falls, MN.

The Folsom House, an 1855 Greek Revival home in Taylor's Falls, MN, an early Minnesota lumbering town, features floors painted in a common, blue-gray and  a yellow ochre like that mentioned in Chase's recipe above.   

Close-up of Folsom House floor
stenciling.

Stenciling was a popular way to decorate painted floors to make them resemble expensive carpets or marble. Stenciled patterns often featured repeating floral or geometric patterns and sometimes included contrasting borders around walls which mimicked carpet borders. Stencils were made from tin sheets which had designs cut out with punches or shears. The stencils were laid on the floor and the paint brushed on leaving the painted pattern on the floor. The process was repeated until the floor was covered with the pattern.   The Folsom House has a few remnants of a repeating, bottle green floral design at the top of the stairway. Examples of  floor stenciling are rather uncommon today as they were often obliterated by foot traffic, removed when painted floors went out of fashion or destroyed when linoleum or carpet was installed. 

For questions or help with your own home's interior paint colors, ornament and period decorating, please visit the Historic Design Consulting Home Page for more information.

The Folsom House is located in Taylor's Falls, MN (about 40 minutes northeast of the Twin Cities Metro) and can be visited between Memorial Day weekend and September, Friday through Sunday between 1 and 4 and on holidays between 1 and 4.

Historic Paint Colors for the Victorian Home: Part Two

For more information about historic paint colors your your Victorian or Arts and Crafts era home, please visit the Historic Design Consulting website today! 

To view Part One of the Victorian Paint Colors post, click HERE.

In a previous post I described my process for selecting historic paint colors for 19^th century homes and businesses.  Rather than relying on so-called “Victorian” color collections from modern paint manufacturers such as Behr or Sherwin-Williams, I use period color swatches.  This way I can be sure to consider the same colors homeowners did 130 years ago and offer my customers a truly authentic color palette.  In addition I also study the way house paints were mixed and tinted to understand better how the original colors appeared 

What is the process for selecting colors palettes for older homes?  First, I read what designers and architects wrote about house colors and fashion in the 19^th century.  Andrew Jackson Downing, Samuel Sloan and many others wrote in detail about selecting paint colors and how they thought a paint scheme should be arranged.  By working my way through these primary sources I can get a good idea how Victorian homeowners and designers picked their color palettes.

Second, I need to know how paint was mixed.  When I read Downing's descriptions of paint colors such as drab or fawn it is essential to know which pigments were used so I can imagine how the paint might have looked.  Also, since painters tended to be a conservative lot who mixed paints using familiar recipes,  I can look at later color swatches to get some idea of older paint colors.  Learning about these paint recipes and pigments is a reliable way to reconstruct an early color palette.   

19th century paint was mixed using four basic ingredients: linseed oil; white lead; turpentine and pigments.  Many of the pigments used before 1875 were earth pigments, or pigments mined or refined  from soil.  In other words, earth pigments are pretty colored dirt.

  

Here are a few examples of pigments that were commonly used in the 19th century.

Indian Red is ferric oxide that was originally mined on the Indian Subcontinent (thus its name).  Other deposits of ferric oxide have been discovered all over the world and several have names, including English Red or Venetian Red, that indicate the place of their origin.  Since this pigment was relatively cheap, barns and industrial buildings were frequently painted with paint containing Indian Red. 

Raw Umber is also named after its place of origin: Umbria, Italy.  It is a medium brown pigment refined from clay containing ferric oxide and manganese.  Raw Umber was widely used in the 19th century. 

  Pigments could be baked in ovens to drive out water and cause them to darken.  Compare this Burnt Umber sample to the Raw Umber sample above.

Burnt Sienna is a limonate clay containing ferric oxide that was originally mined around the city of Sienna in Tuscany, Italy.  

Other pigments, such as Prussian Blue and Chrome Green, were commonly used.  Unlike earth pigments, these pigments were produced in factories.  Although found in many paint recipes, several of these manufactured pigments were fugitive, meaning they tended to fade or discolor in sunlight.  This is why few 19th century houses were painted bright blue or purple since these paint recipes usually contained fugitive Prussian Blue. 

Earth pigments proved to be durable and were widely used until the 1870s when they began to be replaced by brighter, more vibrant colors made from the by-products of the  petroleum industry.   This is why the bright, saturated colors commonly used in the early 1900s on Queen Anne homes look out of place on earlier Italianate and Gothic Revival examples.    

For information about color consults for your historic home, visit the Historic Design Consulting website and click on the House Colors button.

Historic Paint Colors for the Victorian Home: Part One

For more information about historic paint colors for your Victorian or Arts and Crafts era home, please visit the Historic Design Consulting Website today!

To view part two of the Victorian Paint Colors post, click here!

I was asked recently if I used colors from the historic color collections of major paint manufactures such as Sherwin Williams or Benjamin Moore during my paint consults.  My answer was no.  In fact, I really don't know much about these "historic" lines of paint colors because I have never had much use for them.   

Unlike many of today's colorists and consultants, I do not rely on someone else to research historic paint colors and select which ones I might want to use.  Instead, I do the research myself and use the same tools homeowners and painters did in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  These tools include a collection of original brochures with sample paint chips, advertising and commercial literature.

Below is a ca. 1900 paint brochure from the Masury Paint Company with some of its sample chips:

Here is another, somewhat older example from the Breinig's Ready Made Paint Company:

When helping my clients select interior and exterior color schemes I start with the colors found in brochures like these and other period documents.  I then match my selections to chips in the fan-book of a modern paint manufacturer or send custom-mixed sample chips that match the period originals.  My clients or their painters can then go to their local paint supplier and have them mix as much paint as needed.

Why go to all of this effort to pick out a few paint colors?  Our specialty is providing paint schemes for Victorian and Arts and Crafts era homes and businesses. The color palettes should be appropriate for the a building's age and style while still reflecting your tastes.  Although several modern paint manufacturers advertise "historic" color collections, they often narrow the selection to paint colors they consider most suitable to contemporary tastes. This means some historic shades and tones might be left out. By relying on period documents I can be sure that our historic color selections are accurate and faithful to 19th and 20th century color palettes. 

For more information about a color consultation for your home or business, check out the Historic Design Consulting website.

To view part two of the Victorian Paint Colors post, click here!