Architectural Home Styles

If you own a home on the Westside of Los Angeles, you live inside a century of architectural ideas. I have spent more than thirty years building, renovating, and caring for these houses, and I have learned that good renovation starts with understanding what the house is trying to be. This guide walks through the home architecture styles that define our neighborhoods, from the Craftsman bungalow to the California Ranch and the glass-walled Mid-Century Modern. More importantly, it explains how to renovate within each style's vocabulary instead of erasing it. Read on and you will look at your own house, and your renovation plans, with a sharper eye.

Craftsman Architecture: Honest Materials and Visible Craft

People often ask me, what is a craftsman home, exactly? To put it simply, it is a house that shows you how it was made. The Craftsman architectural style grew out of the Arts and Crafts movement in the early 1900s, and Southern California embraced it with particular enthusiasm. You can read a Craftsman from the street. Look for the low-pitched gabled roof, the deep eaves with exposed rafter tails, and the broad front porch carried on tapered columns. Inside, you will find built-in cabinetry, wide wood casework, and joinery that was meant to be seen.

That visibility is the whole point. The style rejected machine-made ornament in favor of honest structure and handwork. As a result, every detail carries weight. A Craftsman with its original quartersawn oak trim, divided-light windows, and period hardware is a different animal from one that has been stripped and drywalled.

How to Renovate a Craftsman House Without Erasing It

If you are wondering how to renovate a craftsman house, start with a simple principle: the new work should defer to the old. For example, an addition belongs at the rear, subordinate in massing, with rooflines and eave details that echo the original. New trim should match the species, dimension, and profile of what exists. Where original windows survive, restoration usually serves the house better than replacement, and I do a great deal of that work myself, alongside the dry rot repair these houses often need after a century near the coast.

Kitchens and baths deserve special care. These rooms carry the most modern demands, so they tempt owners toward wholesale erasure. However, a custom kitchen can hold modern appliances and lighting inside casework that speaks the house's language. Flat-panel doors, visible joinery, and warm wood tones let the room feel current without breaking character. The National Park Service publishes excellent Preservation Briefs on historic materials and methods, and I recommend them to any owner planning this kind of work. With this in mind, treat your Craftsman as a document. You can add new chapters, but you should never tear out the original pages.

California Ranch and Mid-Century Modern: The Postwar Westside

The decades after World War II gave the Westside two of its most beloved home architecture styles. Both pursued the same dream, indoor-outdoor living in a mild climate, but they expressed it differently.

Reading the California Ranch

California ranch-style homes stretch out rather than up. The classic Ranch is a single story with long, low horizontal lines, a low-pitched roof, and an easy relationship to its lot. Sliding glass doors open living rooms onto patios. Courtyards and L-shaped plans wrap around outdoor rooms. The style borrowed from early California haciendas and translated them for postwar family life.

Renovating a Ranch means protecting that horizontality. For example, a second-story addition can destroy the composition of a Ranch in a way it never would on a two-story Colonial. Often the better move is to extend the plan outward, or to open interior walls so the house breathes the way its designers intended. Beyond that, hardscape and landscape matter enormously here. Because the Ranch lives on its connection to the garden, I treat patios, courtyards, and plantings as part of the architecture, not an afterthought.

The Demands of Mid-Century Modern Renovation

Mid-Century Modern took the indoor-outdoor idea further. Post-and-beam construction, flat or low-sloped roofs, clerestory windows, and full-height glass walls dissolved the boundary between room and garden. These houses look effortless. In practice, they are the least forgiving style I work on.

Here is why. A mid-century modern renovation leaves nowhere to hide. Thin roof assemblies offer little room for ducts, insulation, and wiring. Exposed beams cannot conceal a sloppy structural fix. Original glazing rarely meets modern energy expectations, yet replacing it with thick, clumsy frames ruins the transparency that defines the house. Consequently, this work demands engineering discipline and close coordination with your architect. Every mechanical system, every structural upgrade, and every light fixture must be planned so the house keeps its clean lines. When it is done well, you cannot see where the new work begins. That invisibility is the measure of success.

Renovating Home Architecture Styles Within Their Own Vocabulary

Every style I have described has a vocabulary, a set of proportions, materials, and details that make it legible. The central question in any architecturally significant home renovation is whether the new work speaks that vocabulary or talks over it. This is not an argument for museum-piece preservation. Houses must evolve to serve the people living in them. Rather, it is an argument for fluency. An architect and builder who understand a style can extend it, reinterpret it, even argue with it, and the house will still hold together.

The stakes are real. Owners across the country continue to invest heavily in their homes; Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies projects annual home renovation and repair spending to reach $519 billion through mid-2027, according to Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. That said, spending alone does not produce good work. I have seen significant budgets erase significant houses. The difference lies in intent and in craft.

Questions to Ask Before You Draw a Line

Before you start design, walk your house with fresh eyes and ask a few questions. What are the three or four moves that define this house, the roofline, the fenestration rhythm, the material palette? Which original elements survive, and which were lost in earlier remodels? Where can new program, a larger kitchen, a primary suite, a gallery wall, fit without disturbing those defining moves? Additionally, ask your architect how the construction drawings will protect those elements during the work itself. Protection during construction is where good intentions most often fail.

Stewardship continues after the renovation ends. Water is the quiet enemy of every style on this list, from Craftsman rafter tails to flat Mid-Century roofs. In fact, ten percent of U.S. homes have leaks severe enough to waste 90 gallons or more of water per day, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and water that wastes money also rots wood and stains plaster. For that reason, my workshop includes leak detection and elimination, dry rot repair, and estate management for the homes we have built or renovated. A house renovated within its vocabulary deserves to be kept that way.

Ready to Get Started?

I am Dick Minium, and my company builds, renovates, and cares for architecturally significant homes across the Westside of Los Angeles, working alongside owners and their architects on renovations, additions, custom kitchens and baths, hardscape, art installation, and estate management. If you are planning work on a Craftsman, a Ranch, a Mid-Century Modern, or something entirely your own, I would welcome the conversation. Call me at 310.392.6622 or send a request, and we will talk about what your house is trying to be.