Swedish Houses

"They're boxy, but they're good."

I've had the opportunity to walk around some Swedish towns in the last few weeks, and ended up being quite enamoured by the buildings. In particular the single-occupancy houses.

They're mostly variations on the theme of "box with peaked roof". Some of them are delightful in their bland uninspiring pragmatism. Some feel historically important, like the half-timbered houses ("korsvirkeshus" in Swedish), and the houses with thatched roofs. Some are just flat-out cute with their vestibule entries.

If a house is painted in a colour other than white, the colours are pretty standardised, and tend to be yellow, green, red, or blue. With white accents on corners and around doors and windows. See the header image. I did see a very purple house in my meanderings, but for some reason did not take a photo of it. It had two different shades of purple - similar to the purple of the trains in southern Sweden called Pågatågen.

Let's start with an example of bland uninspiring pragmatism:

Cute vestibule entry:

Historically important, maybe: