Matching Windows to California Home Styles

California's housing was built in waves, and each wave had its own window. A buyer in 1910 got wood double-hungs. A buyer in 1928 got casements in thick stucco walls. A buyer in 1958 got a picture window and aluminum sliders. A buyer in 2002 got vinyl single-hungs with arched tops. Replacing windows well starts with knowing which house you have.

This page is part of our California window guide. It goes through the main house types we see from Sacramento to the Bay Area, and then the four things to get right on any of them.

Four things to get right

Proportion

Is the window taller than it is wide, or wider than it is tall? Older styles are vertical. Post-war styles are horizontal. Putting a horizontal slider in a vertical opening, or filling a tall opening with a short window and a panel, changes the character of the wall more than any other single decision. Keep the opening shape.

Operation

How a window opens is visible when it is closed. A double-hung has a horizontal meeting rail. A slider has a vertical one. A casement has neither. Use the operating type the house was built with on the elevations people see. The site's guide to choosing a window style covers each type.

Grille pattern

The pattern of divided panes is specific to each style, and several styles have none. The common mistake is adding a colonial grid to a house that never had one. Our sibling page on window grilles: between-the-glass, simulated and true divided lites explains the construction options.

Depth and trim

Old windows sit back in the wall and cast a shadow. Flush-mounted replacements look pasted on. Where a deeper set is not possible, the trim has to do the work. See the exterior window trim guide.

Style by style

Victorian and Edwardian

The Victorian houses of San Francisco, Oakland, Alameda and central Sacramento were built with wood double-hung windows, tall and narrow, often with a single large pane in each sash and frequently grouped into angled bay windows. San Francisco's Planning Department notes that wood windows were installed on the majority of residential buildings built up to the Second World War, and identifies the all-wood double-hung as one of the three major window types in the city.

What to keep: the vertical proportion, the double-hung operation, and the depth of the sash in the wall. San Francisco's standards point to a detail many replacements miss, the ogee lugs, which are the small curved horns at the bottom corners of the upper sash. On historic buildings there, they have to be integral to the sash, not snapped on.

What to avoid: sliders, colonial grids on houses that had single panes, and flat frames set flush with the siding. Many of these houses are in historic districts, where the choice is regulated. See historic window repair or replacement and the site's page on double-hung windows.

Craftsman bungalow

Bungalows fill the older neighborhoods of Sacramento, Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose and Pasadena. Their windows are wood, usually hung, and almost always arranged in groups. A city style guide written for Escondido's historic neighborhood describes Craftsman windows as typically seen in pairs or triplet clusters, with single-hung or double-hung as the preferred type, and trim that is simple and of medium width, with head and sill pieces slightly longer than the sides.

The signature detail is the divided upper sash over an undivided lower one: three, four or six vertical panes above, one pane below. Wide front windows are often a fixed center with a narrow hung window either side. Small casements appear beside chimneys and in dormers.

What to keep: the groupings, the upper-sash-only grille pattern, and the wide flat casing with its extended head. What to avoid: full colonial grids in both sashes, a single slider replacing a group of three, and narrow modern trim. Painted or clad wood is the natural material. Fiberglass and good vinyl can work if the proportions and grilles are right.

Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission

From the 1920s on, California built in stucco and clay tile. The City of Santa Barbara's design guidelines for the style describe the windows precisely: deeply recessed wood windows, generally fixed or paired casements with lights divided by horizontal mullions, recessed at the wall plane with a stucco return and no trim, often with awnings, and with wood or iron grilles over ground-floor windows on many buildings.

Three things follow for a replacement. The window should be a casement or fixed unit, not a slider. It should sit deep in the wall, with the stucco returning to the frame and no applied casing. And the frame should be dark. Arched feature windows are common, and they should be replaced with true arched units, not a rectangular window with the arch filled in. See the special shapes page.

The standard California retrofit window, with its fin lapped over the stucco, works against this style because it brings the window forward and adds a flat frame around it. On a good Spanish Revival house, a block-frame or full-frame installation that keeps the recess is worth the extra work. Our sibling page on replacing windows in stucco homes explains the methods.

California ranch

The ranch house dominated building from the 1940s to the 1970s. Los Angeles's citywide historic context statement on the type lists its essential characteristics as informality and asymmetry, low-pitched roofs, varied facade treatments that typically include board-and-batten siding, and picture windows.

The windows are horizontal: a large fixed pane in the living room, with sliders, casements or hung windows elsewhere, originally in steel, then aluminum. Some traditional ranches have diamond-pane windows or shutters at the front for a rustic effect.

The ranch is the most forgiving house to re-window. Sliders and single-hungs are right for it, and so are casements. Keep the picture window as a picture window, with operable units either side if you want air. Keep the horizontal emphasis. Avoid grids unless the house had them, and avoid turning the picture window into three equal hung windows. See slider versus single-hung windows.

Eichler and mid-century modern

These houses treat glass as wall. The front has little of it, often only clerestories under the roofline. The back is floor-to-ceiling. Palo Alto's Eichler Neighborhood Design Guidelines put the rule in a sentence: full-pane glass is most appropriate for Eichler homes, and divided-lite and simulated divided-lite windows are not. They list casement, awning, sliding and fixed windows as the appropriate types, and discourage vinyl.

What matters here is thinness. The original glass was held by slim wood stops or narrow aluminum, and thick replacement frames change the house more than any other alteration. Dark bronze, black or clear anodized aluminum tones suit it. Our Eichler window replacement guide covers the options in detail, and the site's page on siding for mid-century modern homes covers the walls.

Mediterranean and Tuscan tract homes

The stucco subdivisions built across Roseville, Folsom, Elk Grove, the East Bay valleys and the South Bay from the late 1980s through the 2000s borrowed Spanish and Italian motifs: tile roofs, arched feature windows, and foam trim bands finished in stucco. Their windows were builder-grade aluminum or vinyl, mostly single-hungs and sliders, often with grids between the panes in the upper half only.

These houses are now at the age where the original windows are failing, and they are the bulk of replacement work in our area. The same Escondido guide describes Mediterranean-style windows as typically casement or single-hung, commonly in double and triple arrangements with two operable windows flanking a central fixed one, recessed to suggest a thick wall, with no trim other than a possible built-up stucco band.

Practical advice for this type:

• Keep the arched windows arched. They are the feature the elevation was designed around.
• Decide on grids once, for the whole front. Removing them entirely gives a cleaner, more current look. Keeping them only in the upper sash stays closest to the original. Do not mix.
• Choose a frame color that suits the stucco and the roof. Almond, tan and bronze were original. White is the default. Black is popular and is a deliberate change of character.
• Mind the HOA. Most of these neighborhoods have one, and it will have a view on frame color and grids. See HOA window replacement approval.

Retrofit installation suits these houses well, since the stucco and foam trim stay untouched. See retrofit windows.

Contemporary and modern farmhouse

Newer houses and whole-house remodels tend toward one of two looks. Contemporary houses use large, undivided panes in thin dark frames, with casements, awnings and fixed units arranged as a composition. The modern farmhouse uses white board-and-batten or lap siding with black-framed windows in tall vertical proportions, either undivided or with a sparse two-over-two pattern.

Both depend on the frame reading as a thin dark line. That favors fiberglass, aluminum-clad wood and thermally broken aluminum, though dark vinyl is widely used. Dark frames absorb more heat than light ones, which affects some materials in Valley sun. Our sibling page on dark window frames and heat explains what to ask, and the site's page on black-framed windows shows one product line.

A caution on converting an older house to this look: black windows and white siding on a 1990s Mediterranean tract house or a 1960s ranch can work, but only if the proportions already suit. Changing the color of the frames does not change the shape of the openings.

Frame color

• Painted wood styles (Victorian, Craftsman) took their sash color from the trim scheme, often a darker accent than the body. A factory color close to that is better than stark white.
• Stucco styles (Spanish, Mediterranean) suit dark frames that read as shadow in the recess.
• Post-war styles suit metal tones or white.
• Interior and exterior colors can differ on many product lines. A dark exterior with a white or wood interior is common.

Whatever you choose, it is permanent on vinyl, fiberglass and clad products. Look at a physical sample against the house in sunlight before ordering.

Glass affects appearance too

Low-E coatings are required in practice to meet California's energy code, and they are not all visually alike. Some have a faint green or gray cast, and some are more reflective from outside. On a house with large panes it is worth seeing a sample. Obscure glass patterns in bathrooms should also be consistent across the house. See types of window glass and obscure privacy glass.

What style does not change

Three sets of rules apply to every house, whatever it looks like.

• Energy. Replacement windows must meet the U-factor and SHGC figures for your climate zone under the 2025 Energy Code. See what Title 24 requires of replacement windows. Qualified historic buildings are treated differently.
• Escape. Bedrooms need an operable emergency escape opening under Section R319 of the 2025 California Residential Code (formerly R310). A style-correct window that does not open far enough is not acceptable in a bedroom.
• Safety glazing. Large low panes, glass by doors and glass in wet areas must be safety glass under Section R324 (formerly R308). See tempered glass requirements.

In designated wildfire areas there are glazing requirements as well. See wildfire-resistant exteriors.

Pairing and combining

Most elevations use more than one kind of window: a fixed pane with operable flankers, a hung window with a transom, a group of three. The site's page on the best window styles to pair covers combinations that work. The general rules are to align head heights across an elevation, keep one grille logic, and let one window in each room be the feature.

Sources

• San Francisco Planning Department, Standards and Recommendations for Window Replacement (May 2025): major window types, ogee lugs, and guidance on simulated divided lites.
• City of Santa Barbara, Historic Resources Design Guidelines: Spanish Colonial Revival.
• City of Escondido, Old Escondido Neighborhood ADU Style Adaption Guide: Craftsman and Mediterranean window characteristics.
• City of Los Angeles, Citywide Historic Context Statement: The Ranch House, 1930-1975.
• City of Palo Alto, Eichler Neighborhood Design Guidelines (adopted 2 April 2018).
• 2025 California Residential Code, Chapter 3: Sections R319 and R324.

Working with Heritage Exteriors

We replace windows and siding, so we look at the whole elevation and not only the openings, and we will tell you when a proposed window is the wrong shape or pattern for your house even if it is the one you asked for. Our quotes list operation, grille pattern and frame color for each opening. Licensed in California, CSLB #1055919. Call (916) 546-2991.