The art of dormer construction has been lost over the past forty years. Some builders get it right, but they are usually the tradition-freaks like us, who regularly thumb through old architecture books. Above is a grid of example photos. The “Don’t” section could be worse, but we want to refine that last 10%. Following are a few of our rules of thumb.
- Scale: Make dormers as trim and as light as possible. Dormers are meant to let light in, not to give grand views. Use them to accent your overall design, not to increase square footage.
- Reduced Framing: Make your framing as tight as possible. We omit the king studs beside the window and only include jack studs on which the headers rest. This makes the next rule possible.
- Trim: Surrounding the window should be a single piece of trim. The outside corner of that piece of trim is the corner of the dormer. [An exception to this is when the siding material is shakes. A good shingler can turn the corner and trim it out in a nice fashion. See C above.]
- Fascia Scale: Don’t necessarily match dormer fascia and rake trim to the fascia and rake trim size of the main house body, it’s usually just too big.
- Gutters: Don’t.
There are many more intricacies, and each design requires its own finess, but these rules of thumb are a good start.
Notes: a.) nice and tight, use of crown molding at roof intersection, slope of hipped dormer matches roof. b.) use of crown molding which matches scale of dormer, not of main house body. c.) shed dormer with minimal overhangs and appropriately scaled rake trim. d.) wall dormer, nice and tight even with stone facade which continues up face of dormer. e.) don’t use gutters, don’t put siding material on front face of dormer. f.) trim around window is a little too big, don’t return fascia and roof on dormer. g.) don’t use gutters, don’t use wide overhangs on dormers. h.) don’t use crown molding that matches scale of main house body. don’t put shutters on wall dormers where they couldn’t possibly be used.
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