08/15/2026
An old friend reached out wanting some ideas for what a Country French home could look like in Louisiana, so we spent a few hours on the phone last weekend talking through likes, needs, inspirations, proportions, and how the house ought to feel. This is where we landed.
It probably leans a little more château-esque than strictly Country French, but that's part of what made it fun. I'd never really worked through a European-inspired house like this before, so I was up for the challenge.
What do y'all think?
The rendering isn't intended to be a finished product. Think of it more as a “back-of-the-napkin” study of what the walls might look like if we stood the floor plan up.
And that's really the point.
Too many houses are designed almost entirely from the floor plan outward. The rooms get arranged first, and only afterward does someone ask, “Okay, now what do we make the front look like?” At that point, the elevation often gets forced onto a plan that was never composed with the exterior in mind.
I think that's one of the reasons so many otherwise expensive houses just aren't particularly pleasing to the eye.
The elevation and the floor plan really need to develop together—window placement, room widths, roof masses, symmetry, hierarchy, entrances, ceiling heights, all of it. If you want the front of the house to be every bit as impressive as the floor plan, you have to be thinking about both from the beginning.
Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
