The overdoor pediment: from temple front to Georgian doorcase

An overdoor pediment is the low gable, usually triangular or curved, set above a doorway. It began as the end of a Greek temple roof, was shrunk down by Renaissance architects to crown doors and windows, and became the defining feature of the Georgian front door. Its job has always been the same: to mark an opening as important and to give a flat wall a sense of order.

There are three main shapes. A triangular pediment has two straight sloping sides. A segmental pediment replaces them with a shallow curve, like a slice of a circle. A broken pediment leaves a gap at the top or along the base, often filled with an urn, a bust or a carved cartouche.

From Greek temples to Rome

Pediments appear in Greek architecture from at least about 580 BC, at the Temple of Artemis on Corfu, one of the earliest known examples. On a Greek temple the pediment was the low triangle formed by the roof over the columned front, often filled with sculpture. The Romans adopted it, usually placing a single pediment over the main front, and tended to pitch it slightly steeper.

The Romans also experimented with the curved form. At the Library of Celsus in Ephesus, built in the early second century AD, a segmental pediment frames a carved mask among scrolling leaves. Triangle and curve, side by side, became a pairing that architects would use for the next two thousand years.

The Renaissance brings it indoors

For a pediment to sit over a door or window, it had to be detached from the roof. According to the Renaissance writer Giorgio Vasari, when Baccio d'Agnolo put pediments over the windows of the Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni in Florence, completed in 1523, Florentines first mocked the idea and then copied it.

Andrea Palladio made the pediment central to his work. His façade for San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, begun in 1566, overlaps two temple fronts, and he gave his country villas temple-like porticoes. His Quattro libri dell'architettura of 1570 carried those designs across Europe. I trace that story in Palladio and the pediment.

A pediment over a door is a small temple front. It tells you this is the way in, and that it matters.

England and the Palladian doorcase

Inigo Jones brought the idea to England. At the Banqueting House in Whitehall, finished in 1622, the lower windows carry alternating triangular and segmental pediments. A century later, Lord Burlington and William Kent revived Palladio's style at Chiswick House, built between 1726 and 1729 and now cared for by English Heritage.

What spread the pedimented doorcase to every market town was the pattern book. James Gibbs published A Book of Architecture in 1728, with 150 engraved plates and some 380 designs, including door and window surrounds. Builders copied such plates across Britain and its colonies, and the "Gibbs surround", with its blocky stones around the opening, still carries his name, although he did not invent it.

Triangular, segmental or broken?

• Triangular. The classic temple form. Calm, formal and the safest choice for Palladian and Georgian rooms.
• Segmental. A gentle arch. Softer, often used to alternate with triangles along a façade or over an important internal door.
• Broken. The sloping sides stop short of the apex, leaving a gap for ornament. Lively and slightly Baroque.
• Open. The horizontal base is interrupted under the pediment, sometimes to make room for a fanlight.
• Swan's neck. A broken pediment with two S-shaped curves, common on furniture and popular in American doorways from the 1760s.

Where to see them, and using one at home

Start with the Banqueting House and Chiswick House in London, then simply walk any Georgian street: pedimented doorcases survive in towns and cities all over Britain. Indoors, look at the doors of grand eighteenth-century rooms, where pediments were often repeated above each internal door. Our Georgian interiors guide explains how they fit into the wider room.

Materials varied with position. Outside, Georgian doorcases were usually made of stone or painted timber, built to survive the weather. Indoors, overdoors and door surrounds were more often carved in wood or modelled in plaster, then painted to match the joinery. The form stayed the same whatever the material: a horizontal cornice, a gable above it, and sometimes a frieze or carved ornament in between.

At home, an overdoor is one of the simplest ways to add architecture to a plain hallway or living room. Choose a width close to that of the door architrave, keep the style in step with your cornice, and paint it to match the woodwork or the ceiling. Our overdoors and door toppers are hand-cast to order in Shrewsbury and supplied in natural plaster, ready to paint with ordinary emulsion.