This article is about the architectural style. For the butterfly, see Painted Lady.



Painted ladies is the collective American vernacular term to describe Victorian houses which are usually painted in a multi-colored pastel scheme, especially in the greater San Francisco area and New Orleans.

The term's popularity spread east in the late 1970s and 1980s, however its use began to decline in the 1990s and is seldom used in 2000, replaced by more accurate terminology such as polychrome. Those familiar with historic preservation view the term painted ladies as bordering on kitsch.



As a rule, highly decorative homes built during the Queen Anne style era (late 1800s) were painted in multiple colors as to draw attention to the elements of the design. After 1900, Queen Anne style fell from popularity, replaced by the classical revival schools of design; whites and light crèmes dominated these types of wood structures, and so many Victorian homes were subsequently painted all white, or one color, as a means of simplifying painting and modernizing facades by playing down their highly ornamented style details.

In a more specific sense, "the Painted Ladies" are a row of such houses on Steiner Street, bordering Alamo Square park, in San Francisco. This block appears very frequently in mass-market photographs of the city and its tourist attractions.


The term "painted lady" is an archaic slang term referring to a prostitute who wore cosmetics in an era when respectable women did not.