Coxhead was an important and innovative designer whose contributions to that woodsy regional design known as Bay Area Traditional have only recently begun to be assessed and appreciated. He designed many homes using the technique that would become his identifying mark: English cottage style buildings without stylistic ornament.

The Coxhead style advanced the notions of simplicity in construction and use of natural materials. Many of his homes were covered in shingles which were left unpainted and allowed to weather. Others, such as the Williams House, were finished in terra cotta.  Many of the homes in the San Francisco area were (and are) painted in pastel colors: The weathered shingle siding was a radical departure from that style. The wood paneling found throughout the Williams house is characteristic of a Coxhead design.  The exterior, with its low dipping roof, is reminiscent of European and Japanese thatched roofs.

Another local Coxhead home can be found in San Mateo at 37 East Santa Inez Avenue. Now operated as a Bread & Breakfast Inn, the home was actually occupied by Coxhead from 1891 to 1924.

Numerous churches were created by Coxhead, many in the San Francisco Bay area. Most of these were commissioned and built prior to 1895, for after that time, Coxhead concentrated on residential designs. Two accessible examples are the Church of the Holy Innocents at 455 Fair Oaks in San Francisco and the Foothills Congregational Church at 461 Orange Avenue in Los Altos. Another Coxhead religious design is not a church: It is the Prayer Book Cross in Golden Gate Park.

Other Coxhead buildings include Cedar Gables Inn in Napa County, the 1908 Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Building (San Francisco), a public library at 1801 Green Street (San Francisco), and Peter's Episcopal Church in Red Bluff.

Ernest Coxhead died in Berkeley in 1933. A collection of his work can be found in the Environmental Design Archives at the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley.