Cozy Cottage Style Homes and Designer-Approved Ideas

For those with more modern tastes, a practical way to incorporate cottage style is to decorate with antiques. Take a note from House Beautiful‘s 2023 Whole Home—designer Caitlin Wilson took inspiration from the elegance of Downton Abbey opting for rows of antique dinnerware along the walls in lieu of traditional artwork.

Tour the Entire Home

Blending your home with nature as seamlessly as possible is key for a cottage-style home. These wooden trellises not only add warmth to the exterior but also provide structure for the crawling vines below.

Tour the Entire Home

In this Nashville children’s room, designer Pfeffer Torode opted for symmetry across every element. Rich hues pair perfectly with subtle patterns to add visual interest in a cottage-style home.

Tour the Entire Home

Nashville may be the home of country music, but it also has very rustic roots. Embrace that history in your cottage-style home by incorporating elements akin to your area’s past. This antique farmhouse sink is the perfect functional piece for a mudroom.

Tour the Entire Home

Cottages are notoriously small, but that should simply encourage you to took to the great outdoors for more relaxation space. A perfect fit for two, this lounge area is mere steps away from both the kitchen and the pool.

Tour the Entire Home

A key element of cottagecore interior style is the use of rich, yet muted colors. Rather than defaulting to a neutral, take a note from this cheerful kitchen and opt for pink cabinetry with a contrasting interior. Wallpaper adds a nice vintage touch in a cottage-style home.

Tour the Entire Home

Bring the outdoors in by incorporating natural textures into your cottage-style home. This Kemble Interiors mudroom utilizes rattan and cane to offset the cool-toned paint and wallpaper.

Tour the Entire Home

Embrace the coziness and rustic vibe of wood paneling in order to make a modern build feel more like a cottage. This kitchen by Pfeffer Torode combines a neutral beige paint with natural wood finishes for a warm feeling.

Tour the Entire Home

Look to your inner Jane Austen (or Bridgerton) character and embrace a wildflower-inspired color palette for your cottage-style home. Bonus points if you display your favorite accessories that look better suited to frolicking than a 9-to-5.

Tour the Entire Home

Abandon the notion of ‘out with the old, in with the new’, and instead keep the old. These original stained glass windows dating back to 1913 illuminate the entire home with character and warmth.

Tour the Entire Home

Mixing and matching colors and patterns is a great way to incorporate some off-kilter eclecticism into your cottage-style home. Play with scale in a single color palette, as designer Annie Kern did in this historic home.

Tour the Entire Home

Combining different textures and weights of upholstery fabric creates a more layered design. Linen, velvet, embroidery, and fringe all craft a cozy and cohesive living room in this home by Katie Hodges.

Tour the Entire Home

Rather than traditional florals and houseplants (both of which we love), opt for a more dramatic way to bring in nature through branches or literal tree limbs like in this Nantucket home.

Tour the Entire Home

Easy, breezy, and beautiful, linen curtains portray a sense of ease wherever they’re placed in a cottage-style home. Take inspiration from Katie Hodges and place your curtain rod close to the ceiling to make it look taller.

Tour the Entire Home

Square footage is often limited in cottage-style homes, but instead of trying to make it look bigger, embrace the small space. This powder room in a California floating home is small yet mighty with red-painted ceilings and on-theme coastal wallpaper.

Tour the Entire Home

Warmth can be created through more than upholstery and furniture choices. By using plaster or interior limewash, as designer Katie Hodges did here, these walls have added character and coziness.

Tour the Entire Home

The best cottage-style homes are often cultivated and collected but never cluttered. If you’re a fan of trinkets, now is the right time to take them out and put them on display. Every flat surface, like this vintage coat rack, is fair game.

Tour the Entire Home

To trick the eye into thinking your space is larger or your ceilings are higher, opt for furniture pieces that stay low to the ground. This space from designer Amanda Jacobs furthers the illusion with a wash of classic, white paint around the entire room.

Tour the Entire Home

Your exterior deserves just as much love as your interior. To make your home appear like it has always been there, no matter how new it is, trailing vines and ivy can add instant character.

Related: The Best Front Door Plants

It’s tricky to incorporate antiques in a kitchen where everything is functional and new. However, you can carve out corners, like this one, where antiques are a seamless part of the modern design.

Tour the Entire Home