Sun Mountain Blog

Victorian Door Goes Modern

Victorian Door Design with Modern Features

Inspiration can come from many places.

This interesting door (design SQ-0700-D065) includes an unusual layout of seven panels, square “sticking” (the profile on the edge of the door’s stiles and rails), and flat panels. And this clean, uncomplicated approach to the door’s custom features makes for a graphic, modern statement.

But this design has roots in perhaps an unexpected place—the Victorian era! The Sun Mountain design team discovered a sketch for this fanciful door in The Elements of Style: An Encyclopedia of Domestic Architectural Detail (2012, Buffalo: Firefly Books). According to the text, the “somewhat whimsical arrangement of panels is sometimes seen inside Shingle and late Queen Anne houses.” It was a design featured in the Universal Design Book, published in 1903 (Chicago).

Architecture Book Cover

Victorian Door Illustration

The American Victorian period (1840-1910) is widely thought of as an era marked by excess and ornamentation. And the “whimsical” design spotted in the architecture text was no exception. However, Sun Mountain’s designers thought that it had potential beyond a particular time period or niche market, and added it to Sun Mountain’s door design library. It was part of the design collection featured when the company launched its new website last September.

And it didn’t take long for a customer to find this gem.

Looking for “something different” for a new home in the Pacific Northwest, a customer began scrolling through the pages of customizable door designs on Sun Mountain’s website only to focus in on the seven-panel design borrowed from a hundred-year-old catalogue.

Engineering Drawing

Unfinished Door at Sun Mountain Factory

“The customer’s choices definitely brought this door into the 21st century,” said Ed Wright, Sun Mountain’s General Manager. “From the select Poplar wood and painted finish, to the flat panels and clean lines of Sun Mountain’s A-1 sticking, it’s great to see a vision come together!”

The doors for this project, all interior—in both single and double door applications, including a fire door—are now en route to their newly constructed home outside Seattle.

For more information or a free quote, contact Sun Mountain at 888.786.6861 or sales@sunmountaindoor.com.