Jump To:

• facade
  facade
• façade
  façade

  noun

  the face of a building, esp the main front

Trivia Time

What style of architecture featured light, asymmetrical, and elaborate facades?

Test Your Knowledge

facade

American  

[fuh-sahd, fa-] / fəˈsɑd, fæ- /

Or façade

noun

• facades
  plural

1. Architecture.

   1. 

      the front of a building, especially an imposing or decorative one.

   2. any side of a building facing a public way or space and finished accordingly.

2. a superficial appearance or illusion of something.

   They managed somehow to maintain a facade of wealth.

---

façade British  

/ fəˈsɑːd, fæ- /

noun

1. the face of a building, esp the main front

2. a front or outer appearance, esp a deceptive one

---

Usage

What does facade mean? A facade is the front of a building or a side that faces a public area. Facade is used literally to describe a decorative, showy, or onrate piece of architecture that frames the front of a building, as in The architect who designed this building used a showy facade on it to help it stand out from nearby buildings. A facade is also a superficial appearance or an illusion, which can be literal or figurative. If a movie star wears a dark hoodie and sunglasses so they won’t be recognized by the press, they are wearing a literal facade. If that movie star acts completely different from who they actually are or puts on an alternate personality in order to trick or convince people of something, that is a figurative facade. Example: He continually lied to keep up his facade until the whole thing stumbled out of control.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• facades
  plural

---

Etymology

Origin of facade

First recorded in 1650–60; from French, from Upper Italian faciada, Italian facciata, equivalent to facci(a) face + -ata -ade ¹

---

Explanation

A facade is the front of a building, or a kind of front people put up emotionally. If you're mad but acting happy, you're putting up a facade. This word has to do with the outer layer of something. One sense has to do with the front or outside of a building. The other meaning has to do with people who are hiding something. In both cases, the facade could be deceiving. A building with a gorgeous facade isn't necessarily gorgeous inside. A person putting on a facade is definitely putting on a front: the face they're showing to the world doesn't match how they're feeling.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

facade façade facades

An AFP photographer on Thursday saw that the diplomatic emblem and a plaque that adorned the consulate's facade had been removed.

From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026

That was a way of getting a bit of Christie in because she does so well showing you what’s beneath the facade of all these archetypes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026

The facade of the building betrays no affiliation—neither hammer nor sickle.

From Slate ● Sep. 18, 2026

The steady decrease in quality is unmistakable, and it’s perfectly conceivable that even a day-one Marvel enthusiast would feel the facade crumbling at some point.

From Salon ● Sep. 11, 2026

The facade of a grand building rises gracefully, pilastered and crenelated.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr

The skyscraper, opened in New York nearly 100 years ago, will see its Art Deco crown polished and restored during a refurbishment that will also involve the restoration of the building's 77-storey façade.

From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026

Today, visitors enter via the ornate Nativity façade, on the church’s eastern side.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

Still pending are the sculpting of the south-facing Glory façade, the eventual front of the church, celebrating Christ triumphant, and the addition of a grand entrance staircase envisioned by Gaudí.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

A nearby building had deep fissured in its façade.

From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026

With nearly eight hundred rooms and a vast, monolithic façade overlooking the Thames, the Cecil was Europe’s largest, if not grandest, hotel—a site typically reserved for diplomatic or national events.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

But most insistently, the interstitial visuals are cinematographer Szor’s night shots of apartment facades in modern Tel Aviv: citizens at rest with their loved ones, working out or eating in front of their televisions.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026

He’d return with images of abandoned stairwells, dilapidated neon signage, Art Deco theater facades, boiler room control valves.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026

Bogota Mayor Carlos Galan said on Blu Radio that damage in the national capital appeared to be limited to cracks in the facades of houses and buildings.

From Barron's ● Aug. 10, 2026

Across Havana, the ravages of time, lack of maintenance and overcrowding is writ large in the facades of one of the best preserved colonial cities in the Americas.

From Barron's ● Jun. 17, 2026

Old buildings, whose gray rococo facades housed my memories of the Forty-Niners, and Diamond Lil, Robert Service, Sutter and Jack London, were then imposing structures viciously joined to keep me out.

From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---