Column Types & Styles

Doric, Ionic, & Corinthian Column Capitals, Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images

The column types that hold up your porch roof may look modest, but their history is extensive and complex.  Some columns find their origins back to the Classical Orders of architecture, a type of “building code” from ancient Rome and Greece.

An architectural column can be decorative, load-bearing, or both. Like in any architectural detail, however, the incorrect column type can be an architectural disorder. Aesthetically, the columns you choose for your home should be the precise shape, in appropriate scale, and idyllically constructed from historically suitable materials.

What follows is a basic look, relating the capital (top part), the shaft (long, slim part), and the base of numerous types of columns.

Cruise this demonstrated guide to find column types, column styles, and column designs through the centuries, beginning with the Greek types — Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian — and their use in American homes.

Doric Columns

The Block Atop the Doric Column Capital is the Abacus – Hisham Ibrahim/Getty Images

Doric columns are an architectural element founded in ancient Greece.  It embodies one of the five orders of classical architecture. Today this modest column type can be found supporting many front porches across America.

A Doric column has a very pure, candid design, much more meek than the later Ionic and Corinthian column styles. A Doric column is also thicker and heavier than an Ionic or Corinthian column. For this purpose, the Doric column is sometimes linked with forte and masculinity. Believing that Doric columns could tolerate the most weight, ancient builders often used them for the bottommost level of multi-story buildings, reserving the more lean Ionic and Corinthian columns for the higher levels.

Characteristics of the Doric Column

Greek Doric columns share these features:

• a shaft that is fluted or corrugated
• a shaft that is wider at the bottom than the top
• no base or pedestal at the bottom, so it is placed directly on the floor or ground level
• an echinus or a smooth, round capital-like flash at the top of the shaft
• a square abacus on top of the round echinus, which separates and evens the load
• a lack of ornamentation or carvings of any kind, although sometimes a stone ring called an astragal marks the transition of the shaft to the echinus

Doric columns come in two varieties, Greek and Roman. A Roman Doric column is similar to Greek, with two exceptions: (1) Roman Doric columns often have a base on the bottom of the shaft, and (2) are usually taller than their Greek counterparts, even if the shaft diameters are the same.

Referenced by ThoughtCo, Lifelong Learning

Residential Doric Columns in Upstate New York. Jackie Craven

Although Doric columns are the most simple of the Greek Order, homeowners are hesitant to choose this fluted shaft column. The even more unambiguous Tuscan column of the Roman Order is more popular. Doric columns add an especially majestic quality, however, as in this rounded porch.