English Cottage Style to Enchant Your Inner Jane Austen

Window Nook

The most thoughtfully arranged rooms look good before dressings or furniture are added. The architecture alone should hold its own, and English cottage style typically stands up to such scrutiny. This window nook offers a sense of the room's inner beauty, with its tucked-away seat, built-in drawers, rustic wall planks, corner corbels, and angled ceilings. Can't you just picture Lizzie Bennet curled up here with a book?

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Statement Piece

Even the humblest items can enhance English cottage designs with the right supporting players. Here, an antique pedestal table with peeling paint becomes an object of intrigue. Everything else—including the beadboard, shutters, and even the slouchy banquette cushions—nods to the table's texture without overpowering it.

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Farmhouse Table

Few things evoke English cottage style more clearly than mismatched chairs pulled up to a long wood farmhouse table. The cheerful floral wallpaper and full pot rack in this lively kitchen make it the perfect space to play host to friends and family.

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Functional Mudroom

English cottages are often on working farms, where long days are spent outdoors. A mudroom is a clever way to confine grit and grime and provide a resting spot for boots, gloves, and hats before entering the central part of the house. This durable, rugged, slate countertop and trough-style sink look just as handsome indoors as outside.

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Country Garden Florals

Bundles of bouquets bloom across this bedding in a nod to the floral prints inspired by English country style—just one of many ways to bring the glory of a garden inside, but these blossoms last much longer than cut flowers. Popular, too, are planked walls and painted pieces. These heavily distressed blue walls check both boxes.

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Indoor Patio Furnishings

With clever juxtaposition, items commonly used on patios or in gardens can seamlessly blend into a breakfast nook or kitchen. Here, a pair of old columns are capped in iron urns, a rickety hutch is strung with chicken wire, and a weathered table and chairs provide casual English cottage style. A swath of antique lace, fresh flowers, and a sparkling crystal chandelier add glamour.

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Lived-In Look

One of the many appealing elements of English country style is that the room is unmistakably lived in. There are no furnishings meant only for appearance; everything eventually takes on a well-worn—and well-loved—patina. In this kitchen, notice the distressed island finish, where paint has been rubbed off the corners and edges. The hutch looks older than the rest of the room. Such versatile pieces are darlings of English cottage design.

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Tips for an English Cottage-Style Kitchen

Cheery and bright, English cottage-style kitchens often feature simple, white cabinetry, a farmhouse sink, and plenty of charm. Get inspired to add cottage style to your kitchen.

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Neutrals and Color

Decorating in English cottage style is a lot like planning a dinner party. You're inviting elements from all sorts of backgrounds to gather in a single spot, and the goal is merry mingling and fantastic storytelling. This bedroom scores on every count, as neutral furniture, fabric, and artwork buzz harmoniously, and a few shots of color inject allure. Each item is interesting on its own, but together? They're unforgettable.

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Weathered Finishes

Paint can cover many sins, which is why it's popular among English cottage-style enthusiasts. But sometimes, a scraped surface that's seen better days has just the right patina for a room. Here, no fewer than four shades of blue—all worn and weathered—beckon guests into a cottage kitchen with a message: Come as you are. Pretension has no place in an English cottage.

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Formal English Cottage Style

For a formal room, this living space certainly hasn't forgotten how to make guests feel welcome. There are just enough homey touches—down cushions to sink into, carefree cotton slipcovers, and a serene color scheme with a hit of sparkle—to remind visitors that English cottage living rooms are places to let your hair down.

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Window Shutters

The English relied on shutters to control sunlight and shield interiors from an unexpected burst of rain or snow. Shutters are still a distinguished window treatment, especially in rooms where privacy is critical and where curtains might seem heavy-handed. Other old-world touches in this bathroom include marble flooring and an assortment of unframed mirrors.

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Salvaged Treasures

English cottage-style rooms provide a space for old things to find new life. Repurposed pieces are especially popular, whether from your attic, a neighbor, or a side-of-the-road rescue. Here, old shutters stand in as a headboard, a vintage suitcase as a footboard, and a castoff chair as casual seating.

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Cottage Breakfast Room

Streaming morning sunshine is nearly all the decoration this breakfast room needs. A long-loved table with a collected set of chairs, wide-plank wood walls, and homey white paint create the ideal setting for the start of a day in the country.

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Second-Hand Organizers

Yes, you could outfit a craft room or sewing space with shiny new organizers from the local office supply store—or you could scour flea markets and thrift shops for jars, bowls, and bins with a bit of rust, some scrapes, and a whole lot of history. The second option is much more fun and puts items that might otherwise remain untouched to good use.

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Back to Basics

Sometimes, the most striking schemes are the simplest, as proved by this nursery swathed in black and ivory. With color stripped out, the focus turns to each lovely piece, from the antique crib painted with a pastoral panel to the shutters with tulip cutouts to the stately Roman shade monogram. All of it is as elegant as the best English cottage style.

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Formal but Unfussy

Even more formal spaces, such as a dining room, flourish in versatile English cottage style, which blends elegance with a relaxed attitude. High-backed wooden and upholstered, well-worn chairs work in this dining room, where an antler chandelier replaces crystals, a nod to the hunt.

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Restful Colors

Muted hues—colors hushed by adding black pigment—are common to English cottage style, as they usher serenity and elegance into a room but allow sparkling finishes to shine. Furniture and kitchen cabinetry are popular places for these tones to conceal scratches and marks and for a touch of color.

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Beautiful Backdrop

Exposing a house's structural elements, such as angled ceilings and wall paneling, is embraced in English cottage style. These beautiful beams and wide-plank wood walls provide a hefty dose of charm and create the backdrop for stately furnishings, rugs, and artwork.

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English Cottage Style Details

English cottage style murmurs rather than shouts. It's a small detail, but tufting on the back of a chair or sofa is a whispered signal that this room bends toward Great Britain. The accent is a mark of craftsmanship and is more understated than other global design aesthetics. Leaded glass windows also provide subtle sophistication. It's upon closer inspection that the details reveal themselves.

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Toile de Jouy

Perhaps the most recognizable pattern for wallpaper and fabric, toile has long been revered for its bucolic scenes, two-tone colorways, and large repeat. It's a classic best splashed lavishly in cottage rooms, and walls and ceilings are both fair game. Utilitarian but intricately decorated black tole trays are a snappy punctuation over the bed.

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Personal Collections

Displaying collectibles, whether for everyday use or just for show, is unmistakably English. Hanging aprons, ironstone pitchers, copper pots, and glass canisters decorate a kitchen. They're so lovely that very little extra is necessary.

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Slipcovered Seating

English cottage style solves the age-old dilemma of unifying mismatched furniture without a great cost: slipcovers. In crisp cotton canvas, duck, or denim, slipcovers hide worn or stained upholstery, protect heirloom pieces, and pull a room together with a few quick zips, snaps, or buttons.

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Cottage-Style Function

Even a utilitarian area like a laundry or craft room can match the style of the rest of the house. Paying extra attention to the design of a hard-working room will make it fun as well as functional. Don't hesitate to transfer detergent into shapely glass canisters, hang vintage metal shelves to hold essentials, or press a large woven basket into service as a hamper. These items have to work hard—they might as well be beautiful.

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Dish and Glassware Storage

A few modern touches aside, this homey kitchen hearkens back to merry old England with its painted island and open shelves displaying dishes and glassware. Putting the everyday on display is a hallmark of English cottage style and a satisfying combination of pretty and practical. A black and white checkerboard floor adds panache.

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Textured Whites

With so many layers of white in this cottage bedroom, texture leaps to the forefront. Notice that each shade of white differs a little from the others, and intriguing textures—chipped paint on the corbels and shelf, pocks on the wooden bench, open stitches on the throw, and ruffles and gathers on the linens—catch the light differently to entice the eye.

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Informal Elegance

English cottage style strikes that tricky balance between elegance and informality. In this kitchen, traditional cabinets are toned down by furniture-like feet and a beadboard backsplash. A marble surface crowns a shabby-looking island with layers of peeling paint. These disparate items happily coexist thanks to a harmonious color scheme and a whimsical approach.

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Cottage Layers

A well-decorated room will reveal its beauty over time as its many layers unfold. White bed linens, painted wall planks, and two different curtains dress this cottage bedroom in serene style. Thanks to a plush, oversized love seat and a fabulous shaded chandelier, the space is suitable for sleeping and lounging.