Most often nowadays, classic door mantels are exterior architectural features only. In earlier centuries, however, door mantels were quite common inside. In the houses of the wealthy--Georgian townhouses, villas, and palatial manors, for example--the design was very elaborate. Pediments were usual, sometimes pointed, sometimes rounded. The exposed cross beam that frames a doorway was the only door mantel the ordinary houses usually featured.

Classic Door Mantels over the Years

Exterior architectural elements come in and go out of fashion across centuries, class lines, styles, and countries. In the country manors of 18th- and 19th-century England, for example, design motifs tended toward the neoclassical. In France in the same period, they tended to the rococo. In Victorian architecture, whether in England or America, architectural elements were almost exclusively wooden and angular. The bold colors in exterior paints emphasized classic door mantels and window pediments especially well.

Cast stone became especially common as a material for exterior architectural design during the late 19th into the early 20th centuries. Essentially nothing more than a particularly fine-grade concrete, cast stone is durable, inexpensive, and easy to shape. Classical decorative elements are beginning to resurface in interior design more and more frequently. Baseboards, of course, never disappeared.

Crown moulding and chair rails, two classic interior architectural elements, are immensely popular once again. Classic door mantels in house interiors are still the exception. These can be as simple as fluted moulding flanking a doorway and joined by corner blocks. One mantel popular in Victorian days was the stained glass window at the top of doorways.