It depends on the style of the home. If the designer of the house specified sloped soffits, it should be sloped soffits.

It also depends upon your definition of "English Cottage type look". Hopefully the designer of the house is competent enough to design the detail to reflect the desired style.

Where I live in Manitoba, it’s most common to do flat. I believe it’s mostly a cosmetic issue. Preference.

Ya would be great to see what we’re talking about

This is the inspiration we are going for for an english cottage type style. this is an AI image, but its the look we were basing it on. On a lot of English Cottage homes I’ve seen they don’t have much roof overhang, but our architect and builder insisted on having overhang so it doesn’t look exactly like the inspiration picture. now trying to decide on flat or sloping soffits to achieve a look close to this image

This is our home, first image has a flat soffit and bird boxes, second image has sloping soffit. I think I like the sloping soffit but I worry the overhang of the soffit will be too long/too much overhang. on the sloping soffit we will not have exposed rafters, they will be enclosed.

How far does your roof overhangs project from the house's exterior wall?

Be sure to detail and pay as much attention to the other sides of the house as much as you do the front of the house.

I like the sloping. but..... it feels like the larger porch overhang detracts from the detail of the slope. However, Mark's pick shows a protruding porch overhang and that looks great so you may be just fine!

Symmetry is important here - I am assuming you can't change the height of the windows on the left gable?

The roof overhangs 1’ I believe, and the front porch roof extends a total of 2’.

@just_janni when you say the height of the window on the left gable, do you mean the large window on the first floor? they are the same size as the ones on the right gable, the framers just didn’t cut the hole properly 🤷🏼‍♀️ (in case window comes in few inches smaller or larger than they anticipated) but window sizes are the same

We had no soffits, no overhangs on our last, modern house. The window frames got pounded by hail. UGLY, dented window frames....houses need large overhangs to be practical. Flat is an industry standard, I'd leave them.

^^^^ . GREAT!!!!!!

I think your house will be lovely. And I love PPF's detail for the rafter ends / fascia.

So it’s possible to cut the overhangs on the front gables back a bit (per PPF’s suggestion above)? Without cutting them back elsewhere? Would the rest of the house match if we did that?

It sounds like that may solve my problem! As I mentioned I like the sloping soffit and don’t like the bird boxes, but I was concerned that the overhang of the soffit will be too long, mainly off of the front gables. I just didn’t think you could cut them back there and no where else/that it would be possible to cut them back at all

This is an up close view to show how much overhang off the gable we have

This is an example of another house with a sloping soffit that our builder built. To me this looks like too much overhang coming off the gables.

We have 1’ of roof overhang projected from the house's exterior wall, so does it need to come off the gables by 1’ as well in order to match the rest of the house?

I said above "I'd rethink the overhangs. They are a key part of achieving the look you are after. I'd cut the ones on the gables back.".

I was referring to the gable ends.

We could be more helpful if you will tell us more about the house, like what type of exterior finish you are using. It's the details that matter and they vary.

Yes, I’m solely referring to the gable ends as well. I didn’t know it was possible to cut them back there, I figured they had to match the rest of the overhang in length?

And absolutely, happy to share more. We are doing brick on the gables and hardie board everywhere else. House exterior will be painted white and we’ll have weathered wood colored roof shingles.

More photos of the gable overhang

This is our front exterior architectural drawings. Sorry if the photos are small I am sharing them from my phone, sounds like I may need to upload them from my desktop instead

Are you working with an architect or designer on this? Details like the overhangs should be called out on the plans.

Brick typically takes 4" -- 3" for the brick and 1" gap. Depending on the trim (fascia and frieze), you may only need a 4" overhang that's measured from the sheathing to the face of the subfascia.