It’s really just personal preference. I wouldn’t worry about it not being asymmetrical, that’s normal for this style.

Do you have a rendering with gingerbread added? You could always add it later if you’re feeling unsure.

Great house, congratulations! What a refreshing new build to see here. :)

At this point, just addressing the gable gingerbread pediment (not changing any of the rendering's scheme for siding, frieze boards, etc), I would probably set up a "major/minor" heirarchy in the detailing rather than an exact duplicate on each gable. Similar to this house, where the gables have different looks, one is more ornate. In your facade the massing to call attention to should be the symmetrical front bumpout.

Do it, it will look fine.

Thank you this is helpful, I am not an architect or a designer but am trying to salvage our dream home as our builder is out of their depth. I should have added that we are re-building the left side of the front porch to re-pitch it with the point centered under the oval window and adding a low-pitched overside gable so that less of the porch roof is in front of the turret windows. We are also planning to paint the door pink (it's 3/4 glass) and I was debating painting all the turret window boxes pink too. Attached is an updated rendering (the best I could do) with the bump out gable having a more prominent, detailed gable decoration and the top gable with running trim.

I love your latest rendering! The gingerbread detail and location are just right, IMO.

If it were my dream house, I'd consider changing the roof so the gable has the same slope.

Thanks for reading my post, unfortunately at this point in the construction phase (electrical and insulation complete) re-pitching the roof would be considerably more expensive than we could afford.

Good solutions on your new rendering, Jenny. Since you are open to spending/reworking a little more, there are a couple other things you can do to bring the scale down and move a little more towards Victorian. It seems that you will only have 2 siding styles (scalloped and clapboard), 3 colors (blue, pink, white), and only minimal scrollwork. So keeping that in mind, any decoration should be proportionate to the tools in your palette and the scale of the house.

- Main gable scrollwork (bumpout): Since the window takes up a lot of the gable, I would use a more simplistic full arch to frame above the window without hiding it, and at a larger scale than your renderings. It will depend on the ready-made piece you purchase (whether wood/urethane/PVC), here I was playing with scale in both ORANGE and YELLOW. You have such large expanses of field color compared to most Victorians (field is the wall faces - siding around all windows) that a very intricate scrollwork may look out of proportion and get lost in the whole facade.

- Minor gable pediment (odd roof): There is a huge expanse of gable. To bring it down and minimize this central out-of-proportion massing accentuated by short windows, I would bump out the gable with brackets under it. This may also help to minimize the different roof pitches.

- Frieze: The scale of the central massing, and the tower would be helped, IMO, by a frieze (more a belly band on the tower). The elimination of a window on the tower coincidentally helped overall, and lends well, maybe even calls for, a frieze. This will also bring the proportion of blank field wall down over the "odd" gable under discussion as well as above the window on the Main gable. You can bring in dentil detailing on the frieze if you want, but keep in mind the scale and proportion of all detailing around the house. I do not know how this frieze carries around on the other 3 facades.

- Oval punched window: This is not a true Victorian piece, but it works. There is a lot of field wall around it, so maybe, not sure yet, to frame the oval within a panel like the tower. The panel would be the field blue, though, not pink.

- Porch columns: Your rendering shows 'hefty' Craftsman style tapered columns. Victorian is more 'dainty' with turned posts. It looks like 6x6 posts, so maybe you can lose the taper and try to make them less solid looking, maybe even replacing the lumber for prefab turned posts, and they will have the same design language as your balusters and scrollwork.

I thought "really great response" when I read @3onthetree 's suggestions and explanations for those suggestions, no matter whether OP acts on them or not.

Jenny, I love the pink and blue, and I also like the assymetrical gables, but to address your initial question, I think the first rendering with the squished and assymetrical gingerbread looks like the worker who installed it was under the influence.

So, of the possibilities, that's the worst, IMO.

re-pitching the roof would be considerably more expensive than we could afford.

I was not suggesting re-pitching the entire roof, just the overhang. Since the house is tall, the lower pitch roof behind would be difficult to see.

Ohhh interesting! I'll have to talk to our builder about that. The stairs are in the turret which is why I thought that side is slightly higher than the other but they may be able do that!

@3onthetree thank you so much for the detailed response, these are fantastic suggestions. Your photo is a huge improvement from my attempt to pick out trim/decor. Will need to re-read this a few times and pull up the images on my computer but will definitely talk to my builder about implementing some of these suggestions.

For the porch posts, the builder said we can't change the lumber because they are weight bearing. I thought wrapping them in a square white wrap be better than the craftsman style (I tried to Victorian-style the render our builders designer sent but couldn't change the posts)

On the porch posts, I can tell you that 4x4 is probably enough for the gravity load, but today that is bumped up to 6x6 for bending stresses. They do make load-bearing posts that are decorative to avoid the wrap. Here is one company at the start of a search (don't know anything about them) just for an example:

https://www.vintagewoodworks.com/porchposts1.html

Most of the trim I was looking at is from Vintage Woodworks! I don't know much about them but I appreciate the amount of information they have on their site and the staff is very friendly.

I'm having trouble convincing my husband to get rid of the fourth set of windows on the tower because he thinks it will look odd that the windows aren't evenly spaced (the three window sets on the tower were supposed to be equally distributed vertically but the stair person said they couldn't make it work and needed the middle window to be lower). If you removed the fourth window we had planned on adding and added those larger framed pink boxes above the second level and below the first level, would those boxes be the same size?

I really like what you did with the main gable. Would you have this be white fishscale siding or something different?

For the frame around the oval window, would you have the siding inside that frame be the same color as the rest of that section?

- How will you add a 4th row of windows back into the tower, if assuming a stair landing will butt into the window (which is why it was removed?)? Unless the window is already bought, I'd use that money set aside for 3 windows to go to the other work to better make it meet a vision of Victorian.

- In my schematic, because of introducing a frieze, I was visualizing anything above the frieze line as scalloped siding, regardless of color.

- For the 2nd floor bumpout gable, I have the siding behind the gable pediment scrollwork the same blue thinking that will allow the scrollwork to standout more rather than blend in if you were to do white siding behind it.

- For the 3rd floor "odd" gable I have the siding white on the garrison bumpout. The lighter "tier" (like a cake) on top, will keep your eye focused on the darker "tiers" below, which brings the scale of that central massing down.

- The oval window I visualized a white frame to carry the lines of the window above it, and the interior of the frame a solid blue panel (assumed a panel to match the material of the pink panels - but blue). It might work in all white, not sure. So far, I don't think I would introduce pink anywhere else other than the tower and front door - because I'm guessing no other windows on the porch or the other 3 elevations, and no scrollwork, posts, railings, or brackets will have an opportunity for pink. In typical Victorian color schemes, there is usually a few differing colors in the palette, but they are dispersed everwhere in lots of small detailing, so when you stand back you get a cohesive picture (like a Monet painting - looking closely it's a bunch of color swabs, but stand back and it takes shape). Here though, you have very little detailing and large swaths of siding, so I would keep the pink to just "highlighting" the dominant trait of the house - which is the tower.

Less is more. I'd vote for less detailing.