What Is Hamptons style – Your Complete Guide?
The Australian home construction industry is building homes at the rate of over 200,000 a year. In July 2018, the number of building approvals was 18,309 and 9,876 of those were for private homes. If you look at housing estates, there is a bit of ‘sameness’ about the style and type of homes that are being constructed. People are looking at doing things differently.
Why Hamptons?
What’s becoming popular in the housing construction industry? Would you believe it’s ‘the Hamptons style? You may well ask what exactly is a Hamptons style home, and your answer will be found on the websites of some builders in Australia, but in fact, the style is referring to an area near New York called the Hamptons.
The Hamptons is really not as close to New York City as it is to New Haven, as the crow flies, and is located on the southeastern region of Long Island. It has been a summer holiday or weekend escape for middle and upper-class New Yorkers. The Hamptons is not a town itself, it’s a collection of many small towns that include Southampton, Hampton Bays, North Sea, and East Quogue.
Australians associate the Hamptons as being a sort of summer playground for the rich, but it’s comparable to our Mornington Peninsula, or the south coast of NSW, like Wollongong, where it’s not necessarily the rich, but rather laid back living for the middle class.
The Hamptons is one of the most scenic areas of Long Island and the relatively low population made it popular with filmmakers. If you want to familiarise yourself with what a Hamptons house looks like, take a look at a couple of Woody Allen movies such as Annie Hall and the Mighty Aphrodite. Other movies shot in that area were She Devil, Something’s Gotta Give and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The Hamptons Style Home Is Popular
What is all the fuss about when we are talking about Hampton style home buildings? Well, Australians love their holiday homes, for one, and secondly, they love outdoor living with BBQ’s and backyard entertainment, and three, they love to do things like they do in America. The Hampton home is the epitome of that Australian lifestyle portrayed in a building and presented to us in TV and movie entertainment. “I want a house like that!”
What else about the Hampton style? It really does look good. Certainly gorgeous, and quite a bit different to the standard Aussie home we can see as we drive around the suburbs. The Hampton style is an appealing look and there are different materials available that can be used in the construction and to add a bit of flair, such as shingle walls. You can have the house built with feature brick walls, gables and turrets, and for that total look of authenticity, prop a couple of columns at the front entry.
Hampton Style – Interior
You’ve seen them in the movies and these homes are now available to be built in Australia. They are ideal for both large and small families and the design you choose will reflect that. Family gatherings in wide, open kitchens, dining and family rooms, and you can have as many bedrooms as you can afford, or need, depending on the size of the family. Most homes these days opt for 3 and 4 bedrooms, the master bedroom with ensuite.
The windows in a Hamptons style home are a feature. Large enough to let in lots of light but not wide open expanses of glass. Rather the windows are divided into smaller panes. In this day and age of Passive House (Passivhaus), the idea is to have a home that is energy efficient, and that energy rating means windows, internal envelope, orientation, and insulation must all play a positive part in the construction.
Hamptons Style – Exterior
The roofing material on a Hamptons home is shingles – plain and simple, no getting away from that. The installation of shingles may mean you will have the added advantage of an extra room – that being an attic. Remember all those movies that show homes with attics? Hampton style homes have an attic because of the way the roof is designed, resulting in a liveable space between the ceiling and the roof. You don’t HAVE to make an attic from that space. It’s just an option that you can have for an additional storage area.
Properly insulated, the roof space area can add substantially to the energy rating of the home. GAF shingles are America’s favourite roofing material, and Australian suppliers of this roofing material, All American Roofing, know what is best for the style of home that you are planning to build. The reflector types of shingles, for example, can be used to provide an effective dispersal of the sun’s heat.
Different countries have different building codes and they tend to use a range of materials for the construction. You can choose sprung wooden floors, rather expensive these days, or concrete covered in carpet, ceramic tiles or timber. Houses are no longer built from weatherboard as this style is expensive and not all that efficient when it comes to energy ratings. Concrete blocks or bricks for the walls. These can be covered in rendered cement and painted, or if you are really into the Hamptons look, then a shingle siding will help to add a remarkable feature to the front of the house.
Genuine Hamptons Style Roof
The roof has to be shingles. A Hampton house has a shingle roof. While this is not such a popular material for roofing in Australia at the moment, it is certainly building a reputation. For example, GAF roof shingles have been around for over 130 years and sit on the roofs of over 50 million homes in the USA. It’s not as if you are experimenting with a newly discovered roofing material. If you are serious about asking your builder to construct a Hampton style house, then check with a roofing contractor and supplier who can offer a wide range of styles in shingles for your roof. Being different is not a bad idea.
