Shed, Gable, or Hip – Choosing the Right Dormer for Your Cape Cod Style Home

Homeowners who are looking to add usable square footage to their home's existing footprint will often look to the basement, garage, and attic for a solution. For many, depending on the style of their home, adding a dormer can add beauty and curb appeal.

For homeowners who live in a Cape Cod style home, adding a dormer can increase the usable space in their home. Many Cape Cod-style homes include an attic space, but traditionally they feature low ceilings, or sharp angles making them good for little more than storage. However, adding a well designer shed, gable, or hip style dormer can add plenty of floor space, increase natural light, and give you the space you need without altering your home's existing footprint.

In this blog post, we're going to look at some important considerations to make before adding a dormer to your Cape Cod style home.

Why Add A Dormer?

Dormers can bring architectural interest to both the inside and outside of any home. In the interior, a dormer can take what may be a dark attic space and make it habitable with a dormer window. A bathroom can be enlarged by adding a dormer tucked into a large bedroom. Besides adding additional living space, a dormer can also bring in lots of natural light and ventilation, making your home's interior more inviting and healthier!

Read 7 Popular Styles Of Dormers Used When Remodeling

On the exterior, a dormer can help to define your home's style. Neo-colonial, Second Empire, American Foursquare, and Cape Cod style homes are all home styles that often include one or more dormers in their designs. In a cape Cod style home, a dormer can give it a sense of height, as well as breaking up the roofline to add design interest.

When properly designed, a dormer can accentuate the architectural details in the body of the home and include details like scrollwork, pediments, and symmetry into your home's exterior design.

Three Popular Dormer Styles

Depending on the style of dormer you choose, you can add plenty of usable space to your home for an additional bathroom, bedroom, office, or even a second family room. A dormer can give you the added headspace to create almost any time of space you need.

View This DeForest, WI Remodeling Project With Multiple Porches

The amount of light and ventilation a dormer will add is almost unlimited. The windows can match your home's existing windows, or you can make the dormer an architectural statement with a fancier window with colored glass, or a non-traditional shape. Windows can be fixed, or designed to open to improve ventilation throughout the house.

There are three popular dormer styles that are typically added to the traditional Cape Cod style home. They are:

• Gable Dormers

Dormers became especially popular in the 1950's Cape Cod Style design during the mid-century building boom. They weren't especially fancy in fact most were simple gable roof dormers that functioned to add light, floor space, and symmetry to this classic American home. A gable roof consists of two sloping sections meeting at the top ridge. They form a triangular shape for the top of the window wall of the dormer. The walls extend downward from the gable roof and are vertical.

• The Extended Shed Dormer

This is perhaps the most popular type of shed dormer as it extends nearly the full width of the house. It can be built in either the front or back of the house, however in a typical Cape Cod style home, it's often used in the back of the house in conjunction with the traditional gable dormers in front. This type of dormer extends the interior space without adding to the footprint of the home. It's been extremely popular since the 1960s until today.

• Through-the-Cornice Dormers

Most dormers are "roof dormer" windows – the structure's roof surrounds the dormer much like a skylight. Accounting for snow loads, constructing roof dormers is pretty straightforward in both original design and renovations. A more complicated, yet more elegant design is the dormer that's built through cornice or roof's edge. Also called “wall dormers,” these through-the-cornice dormers are a modern take on traditional gable dormers.

Four Considerations Before Beginning Construction

When constructing a dormer, you are in essence building a “mini-addition” through the roof of your house to create a higher ceiling and additional interior space. You remove the old roof and build the new structure. Consider the following four factors before you call your contractor!

• The Cost to Build

A window dormer can cost around $4000 with a bathroom dormer averaging around $23,000 or more including materials costs. If you're adding multiple dormers that total can quickly climb. Because dormers also increase square footage, it may also cause your homeowner's insurance to increase a bit. It should be less than if you built a full addition, but you'll probably recoup at least some of that cost when you resell. Basically, the more space you add, the more you'll pay.

• Permits

Adding a dormer will require building permits for most locations before legally being able to start construction. In fact, the permitting process can be the most time-consuming part of the process. Working with a professional contractor or design-build firm can accelerate the process somewhat, however it can still take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, depending on your municipality.

• Think About Style

As we discussed in the previous section, you have several choices when it comes to picking a dormer style. Typically the style you choose depends on the function of the space you're adding, for example, a bedroom, or bathroom, and the roof shape and pitch. Gable and shed dormers are the most popular for Cape Cod style homes. It's most likely that your contractor will suggest that you keep the dormer roof aligned with your home's roof for the best aesthetics.

• The Size of the Dormer Addition

Dormers add usable space to the inside of your home, within its existing footprint, when you can't or don't want to build out. You can use dormers to add a window to your home, break up the monotony of your roofline, or to add another level to your home. Many homeowners add dormers because they consider their current attic as unusable, or wasted space that provides a lot of floor space, but not enough ceiling height. Building dormers can allow you to add bathrooms, bedrooms, or closets without having to change your home's footprint.

If you live in the greater Madison, Wisconsin area and are looking to add usable living space to your Cape Cod home, give the design experts at Degnan Design Build Remodel a call at (608) 846-5963. We're always happy to answer your questions and can help you to add dormers to your home's existing design that will enhance its curb appeal, and provide you with the increased living space you're looking for. Schedule your appointment today for a free, no-obligation consultation to discuss your creative vision!