California Style Mailboxes

Some years back you visited the Hotel Del Coronado just across the bay from San Diego, and you're thinking of California style mailboxes. You know how powerful a design element a mailbox can be as a finishing touch to landscaping and the curbside appeal of your house. You want to convey that wonderful sense of the Pacific Ocean. Whether you're back in Nebraska or Tidewater Virginia, there's something about the Pacific that you can't get out of your system.

Maybe it's not the Victorian element of the grand red roof and wide verandas of the Hotel Del, though. You might own a Craftsman-style bungalow with a full-width front porch and low-pitched front-gable roof. The low retaining wall is the same stucco as the house. It's Mission style, as you well know, and you've echoed the Spanish colonial theme in your landscaping. What better to cap this design off than something in the way of California style mailboxes?

The fact is, the range of California style mailboxes is incredibly wide. From the 1920-era Victorian townhouses on Lombard Street in San Francisco--the "crookedest street" in the world by all accounts--to the Mission-style villas in La Jolla to the contemporary lines of condominiums in Encinitas, there's no one California style. It's that simple.

California Style Mailboxes: In a Nutshell

Like any others in the United States, California mailboxes must meet USPS specifications or a mail carrier won't deposit mail there. Curbside mailboxes must stand between 42 inches and 48 inches from the ground to the bottom of the mail receptacle. Mail slots, whether in a door or in a post-mounted mailbox, must be about nine or 10 inches wide--large enough to receive conventional mail. Mailboxes must also be deep enough to hold several days' worth of standard four-inch by 10-inch envelopes, circulars, and magazines.