Pick a floor plan and you have settled what the inside of your home does — where the kitchen opens, how the bedrooms sit relative to each other, whether there is an office. What you have not settled is what any of it looks like from the curb.
That is a separate decision, and at Palmetto Estates every plan offers three versions of it: Spanish, Farmhouse and Contemporary. Same plan, three different houses from the street.
What an “Elevation” Actually Means
“Elevation” is the builder’s word for the exterior architectural style of a home. It is an old drafting term — the elevation is the straight-on drawing of a wall — and it stuck as the name for the package of exterior choices that go with each style.
Changing the elevation changes the roofline and roofing material, the siding, the shape and trim of the windows, the garage doors, the front door, the exterior lighting and the color palette. It is a substantial change to the look of the house.
What it does not change is the plan you chose. The rooms, their sizes and the way they connect stay as they are. You are choosing how the home presents itself, not how it works.
The Spanish Elevation — Included on Every Plan
The Spanish elevation is the one included in every plan’s base price. When you see a “from” price anywhere on this site or on a listing, that is the Spanish price.
It reads warm. Cream stucco walls, a barrel-tile roof in terracotta tones, and a stone accent wrapping the entry. The openings are arched — the front window, the garage bays, the recess over the door — and the window trim and front door carry a wood tone that picks up the roof. Small decorative medallions sit in the gable peaks.
It is the most traditional of the three, and the most at home in the Central Valley light, which is warm most of the year and does flattering things to a terracotta roof around sunset.
The Farmhouse Elevation
The Farmhouse elevation trades stucco for siding — vertical board-and-batten across the gables, horizontal lap siding elsewhere, both in a clean off-white with crisp white trim. The roof goes to a gray shingle profile, and a band of stone wainscot runs along the front.
The color accents do a lot of the work here. Shutters and the front door are a muted slate blue, the door carries a row of glass lites across the top, and the garage doors are carriage-style with windows along the upper panel. Lantern-shaped sconces flank the bays.
It is the brightest of the three elevations and the most detailed — there is simply more trim, more texture and more contrast happening across the front.
The Contemporary Elevation
The Contemporary elevation is the quietest of the three, and the most horizontal. The roof pitch drops and the overhangs deepen, which pushes a band of shadow across the top of the house and makes it read longer and lower than it is.
The palette is greige stucco set against charcoal accent planes — at the entry, around the window group, along the garage. Windows are tall and narrow with dark frames, ganged together rather than spread out. Garage doors are flush and dark, sconces are simple black rectangles, and the ornament that the other two elevations use is almost entirely absent.
If the Spanish elevation is about warmth and the Farmhouse is about detail, this one is about line.
What Each Elevation Costs
The Spanish elevation is included. The other two carry a premium that varies by plan — the larger the plan, generally the more exterior there is to execute.
| Plan | Spanish | Farmhouse | Contemporary |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Shasta | $619,900 | $629,900 | $624,900 |
| The Heirloom | $639,900 | $646,900 | $642,900 |
| The Sonoma | $669,900 | $677,900 | $674,900 |
| The Tacoma | $709,900 | $718,900 | $714,900 |
Prices shown are base prices for the plan and elevation listed and do not include structural options, design selections or lot premiums. Pricing, availability and included features are subject to change at any time without notice. For current pricing, contact a Palmetto Estates sales representative at 661-215-2727.
In practice the elevation premium is one of the smaller numbers you will weigh, and it is the one that changes what you see every single time you pull into the driveway. That is worth keeping in proportion against options that disappear behind drywall.
Elevation Is Not a Design Studio Choice
This trips people up, so it is worth being plain about: your elevation is decided early, with your plan and your structural options, well before you sit down to choose finishes.
The reason is practical. The elevation determines framing, roof structure and exterior materials — it has to be settled before the house is built, not while it is being built. Your design studio selections — flooring, cabinetry, counters, tile, paint — come later and are largely interior.
One useful consequence: the two decisions barely constrain each other. A Contemporary exterior does not commit you to a particular kitchen, and a Spanish exterior does not rule one out.
If you are buying a home that is already under construction or finished, the elevation is already set — it is part of what you are looking at. You can see which elevation each home carries on the available homes page.
Seeing Them in Person
Renderings are useful for comparing, but they flatten things. Depth of overhang, the texture of board-and-batten against stucco, how the stone actually meets the siding — those land differently standing in front of a finished house than they do on a screen.
All three elevations are built within the community, so they can be walked rather than imagined. The photographs above show the Shasta; each plan interprets the three styles a little differently, so it is worth looking at your specific plan on its own page — Shasta, Heirloom, Sonoma and Tacoma — or browsing all four on the floor plans page.
The Short Version
Three exterior styles, same floor plan underneath. Spanish is included and reads warm and traditional; Farmhouse adds siding, stone and slate-blue accents for a brighter, more detailed front; Contemporary drops the roof pitch and the ornament for something longer and quieter. The premium is modest relative to the house, the decision happens early, and it is the one you see every day.
If you would like to compare them standing up rather than scrolling, you can schedule a tour and walk all three.