House design guide
What Westmeath wants your home to look like
Building or extending a home in rural Westmeath requires designing it to blend quietly into the natural landscape. The council expects homes to use simple building shapes with narrow plan depths, traditional natural materials, and careful siting that preserves existing native trees and hedges instead of replacing them with suburban-style walls and exotic plants.
Accepted house types & forms
What they want to see
Encouraged by the guide
Siting below the skyline(Pages 8, 32, 40)
Locate houses within naturally occurring folds, shelves, or slopes of the landscape to provide natural shelter and prevent the home from appearing prominently on the skyline.
Narrow building depth(Page 44)
Keep plan depths shallow (typically between 4 to 7 metres) to ensure simple, traditional proportions and prevent the house from looking overly bulky.
South-facing orientation(Pages 42, 62)
Orient the house and position major living rooms to face southwards to maximize natural solar heat gain, daylight, and overall energy efficiency.
Traditional roof pitches(Page 44)
Construct main roof pitches at an angle of 40 to 45 degrees, which echoes the traditional building style of the region.
Retention and planting of native hedgerows(Pages 31, 56, 60)
Keep existing boundary hedgerows intact and use local native plant species (such as Hawthorn, Blackthorn, and Holly) to naturally screen the house.
Simple wall-to-roof detailing(Pages 20, 49)
Finish eaves and gables cleanly with flush details rather than using projecting, heavy bargeboards or box eaves.
What gets refused
Discouraged by the guide
Ribbon development(Pages 11, 15, 18, 26)
Avoid building homes strung along main country roads in a continuous line, which creates a suburban environment and harms rural road safety.
Exposed ridge and hilltop placement(Pages 8, 28, 32)
Do not build on highly visible, exposed hilltop sites or ridge crests where the house will break the natural skyline backdrop.
Deep and bulky floor plans(Pages 43, 44, 46)
Avoid deep plan houses (e.g., 10 to 12 metres deep) that require complex, heavy, and bulky roof shapes to cover them.
Uncharacteristic materials(Pages 47, 49)
Avoid using suburban materials such as uPVC windows and gutters, plastic barge boards, non-local brickwork cladding, and artificial stone facing.
Exotic and non-native landscaping(Page 60)
Do not plant highly intrusive non-native hedge species like Leylandii, Lawson Cypress, or Cherry Laurel, which look out of place and offer poor wildlife value.
Suburban entrance treatments(Pages 40, 57, 59)
Avoid grand, suburban-style entrances with ornamental gates, brick piers, or extensive tarmac/asphalt driveways that destroy existing roadside hedges.
Materials & finishes
- Natural slate for roof coverings (Page 43, 47)
- Plastered or rendered walls finished in paint or traditional limewash (Page 43, 47, 49)
- Natural stone used with sensitivity to match local historic stone structures (Page 47, 48)
- Painted timber for windows and doors (Page 43, 47)
- Fibre cement slates as a high-quality alternative to natural slate (Page 47)
- Zinc or corrugated metal roofing for contemporary buildings, reminiscent of historic agricultural corrugated iron (Page 27, 48, 50)
- Western Red Cedar or other timber cladding designed to weather naturally to a silver finish (Page 47, 48)
Roofs & form
- Simple, traditional rectangular forms, single-room deep, are preferred (Page 20, 44)
- Symmetrical roof profiles with traditional gabled ends rather than complex hips or projections (Page 24, 44)
- Roof pitches designed between 40 and 45 degrees (Page 44)
- Flush eave and gable detailing to avoid messy or bulky overhangs (Page 20, 49)
- Robust, prominent chimneys positioned along the roof ridge or at the gable ends (Page 24, 25, 52)
- Carefully proportioned dormer windows (such as half-dormers or small gables) set sparingly within the roof space (Page 25, 50, 51)
Siting & landscape
- Siting should utilize natural land contours, placing houses on shelves or gentle slopes to hide them from the wider landscape (Page 31, 40)
- Protect, maintain, and augment existing trees, banks, and native stone walls (Page 31, 35, 56)
- Arrange buildings in courtyard or cluster patterns to reflect historical farmyard layouts, which naturally provides wind shelter (Page 18, 21, 23, 43)
- Minimize visual clutter by hiding vehicles, oil tanks, waste bins, and domestic paraphernalia from public road views (Page 40, 60, 64)
- Strictly avoid building on poorly drained bogland soils or within a 500-metre protection zone around the Royal Canal corridor (Page 12, 38)
- New roadside entrances must carefully balance safety sightlines (90m for 30mph zones, 120m for 40mph zones) with preserving original hedges (Page 58)