Whether it’s Emily Thorne’s beach house in the hit TV series Revenge or a holiday getaway to picturesque Sag Harbour, the Hamptons continue to inspire home designs here in Wilmington. We’ve listed the five must-have Hamptons design features we think that best capture the character and charm of the luxury weekenders, holiday homes, and beachside estates in New York’s famed summer playground.

1. Weatherboards: Quintessentially ‘Hamptons,’ weatherboards were traditionally long planks of wood used to clad the exterior of Long Island homes, protecting them from the salty sea air and harsh winds that whipped along the coastline. Thankfully, today’s weatherboards offer lower maintenance than their predecessors. Typically made of fiber cement instead of high-maintenance timber, modern weatherboards look stunning painted in the soft blues, dove greys, and silky creams associated with the Hamptons style. Used horizontally, they create a classic Hamptons design feature. Different profiles are available depending on whether you’re after casual beachside style, or a more detailed, formal look.

2. Shingle-style roof tiles: Often used in conjunction with high roof pitches, traditional roof shingles help give classic Hamptons homes their distinctive aesthetic. Traditional rustic roof shingles were often made of timber or slate. Flat and rectangular, the overlapping shingles created long sweeping rooflines. Today’s choice of roof tiles means you can easily mimic the traditional look while sticking to a new, readily available product. Choose grey or dark grey to set off soft-hued exterior walls and the crisp white of joinery and moldings.

3. Arbor: Add a touch of romance and nostalgia to your Hamptons-style home with a pretty white-painted timber arbor, complete with a delicate climber such as wisteria. White-painted timber is a popular choice for many Hamptons design features inside and out, from balustrading and window and doorframes to skirting boards, wall paneling, and architraves.

4. Moldings: Usually painted a crisp white moldings highlight features such as window shapes, pillars, and layered elements in a Hamptons style home. They add both character and definition and include capping, frieze panels, and banding.

5. Stone: With its beautiful texture and natural color variations, stone is one of our favorite Hamptons design features. There’s a vast array of natural and engineered stone cladding to choose from, with both light-colored and dark-hued stones working well for this look. It’s all about highlighting the stone with crisp white.

Checklists are all very well, but we know designing a custom Hamptons-inspired home is about much more than a few essential features. Timeless custom homes such as those inspired by the Hamptons style demand meticulous attention to detail – and innate sense of balance and proportion – that Tongue & Groove brings to each luxury home we design and build.