Copper Finials: All in the Details

April 3, 2013 12:15 pm

Sometimes a home just doesn’t quite look right from the outside. You’ve painted your home the right color, you went and build a whole picket fence around the property, but something’s missing. Maybe your home doesn’t look as elegant as you’d like, maybe it doesn’t have the timeless quality you were going for. Whatever the case, the fact is that when it comes to the aesthetics of a home, it’s all in the details.

Making your home your own isn’t just a matter of making it comfortable, making it a pleasant place to live. Making your home your own has a lot to do with personal pride, appearance, style, making your home beautiful inside and out. Copper finials, for many home owners, are that finishing touch, the delicate, artful addition that turn a building from a house into a home. The classic, timeless beauty of copper finials brings to mind bygone eras and creates a more romantic setting.

This almost sounds like we’re overselling just what a short piece of metal applied to the corner of your roof or on a weather vane can do, but once you see the difference, it’s clear that a finial really can change the look of a home.

The famous comic book artist Bernie Wrightson once took on the project of illustrating the entirety of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein simply as a pet project. The story took him decades to illustrate because of the intensive visual research involved, and one of the main things that Wrightson was researching was the look of rooftops and finials in the Victorian era. That’s how important a finial can be to the look of your home: so important that famous artists spend decades of their lives learning how to draw them just right.

The look of your home is all in the details. The trim around your window, the solitary garden gnome, the fact that your lawn is cut just a quarter inch shorter than the neighbor’s lawn. It all adds up and it all changes the appearanceof your home in subtle ways. Obviously the big measures, the roof tiles that you choose, the color you paint your home, that all counts, as well, but it’s the tiny details that really make a home your own.

If you plan on selecting some copper finials for your home, remember that the smaller the detail is, the more important it just might be. The tone of the copper, the shape, the length, even an extra couple of inches can make all the difference in the world when it comes to what you want your home to look like.

Think like an artist. Determine the mood, the feel that you want your home to express, and then select the tiny details accordingly. Is a copper finial on the weather vane a bit much or is it just right? Do you need finials on every turret? Whatever you decide, remember that it’s the small things that really count and transform a house into a home, and a home into a work of art.