Six Ways to Steal My Traditional Farmhouse Style

Steal my traditional farmhouse style for your own home with paint colors, finishes, and furnishings to create a cozy, collected look.

Creating a home that will stand the test of time and that you’ll love for years to come is no small feat. Home renovations, updates, and furnishing purchases can be big decisions, and it can be hard to know if you’re making the right choices, especially with new styles and flashy trends popping up every day to distract you. My goal is always to make choices for my home that my future self will thank me for. Sometimes that means going against the biggest trends of the day with the way I decorate, and sometimes that means whole-heartedly embracing them if I think they truly are right for our old Victorian farmhouse. Today I thought it would be fun to give you kind of a “cheat sheet” for creating the traditional farmhouse style that you’ve been used to seeing around my house. It’s one part classic country farmhouse, one part English cottage, and one part grandma’s cozy vibes. It’s always liveable and comfortable, filled with finds that inspire me and reflect the lives of the family members who live here. Read on, and I’ll share the important elements that come together to create this look.

Traditional Farmhouse Staple: Dark Wood Antiques

Pictured above: Chandelier | Curtains | Lamp | Horse Print | Large Urn | Small Urn | Similar Stems | Flooring

Dark wood antique furniture is a staple of many traditional home styles, and it’s such an important element in my home. My dining room set is a family heirloom, but I’ve collected quite a few other similar pieces over the years for the other rooms of our house. I love the way it anchors a space and instantly makes it feel like home. It can be paired beautifully with other wood tones, metals, and painted furniture pieces to make it feel more formal or to give the room a more casual feel, depending on what decorating style you choose in your home. This style of furniture can even be used in a modern house designed in a traditional style to make it feel more lived-in, warm, and welcoming.

Warm Whites on Walls and Trim

Dark and moody colors, saturated jewel tones, and deep, earthy hues, may be dominating interior design trend forecasts right now, but white walls will always be a classic palette that we’ll come back to again and again. For that reason, I mostly use white and off-white tones for the walls in my home. I love the way white reflects light, the way it looks in photos, and the fact that I mostly just have the touch it up every now and then, rather than repaint the entire house whenever trends change.

Easy cottage-style DIY project for a traditional house: DIY Plate Rack Using IKEA Ledges

Contrasting Black for Doors and Accent Furniture

Pictured Above: Rug | Doorknob | Boat and Tote Bags (Size Large and X-Large) | French Market Basket | Cubby Baskets | Sun Hat

One of the easiest little upgrades you can do for your home during a renovation is to paint your interior doors in a contrasting color, rather than leaving them builder-basic white. In my case, I’ve painted quite a few of my interior doors in Benjamin Moore’s “Onyx” and it’s such an easy way to add a little drama wherever it feels needed. The black and warm white color scheme is classic and traditional, but never boring. I’ve also used this same color on numerous pieces of accent furniture around the house, such as dressers and bedside tables.

Framed Vintage Prints and Paintings

Framed vintage or antique art is such a great way to bring personality and character to any space. Whether the art is collected and sourced from your favorite antique markets or a reproduction ordered online, carefully chosen art helps you to create a home that reflects the people, places, and things that inspire you. I love to use art that fits in harmoniously with the age of our old house and our country setting, and you’ll find antique-style prints and vintage oil paintings all over our home wherever I can use them.

More vintage-style farmhouse decorating: DIY Framed Vintage Art Prints

Baskets for Decor and Storage

My love of baskets and woven textures is well-documented, and that’s because I rely on them throughout my entire home. When you’re working with a mostly neutral scheme, woven textures like wicker, rattan, seagrass, and water hyacinth play a big role in making a room feel inviting and homey. I hang baskets on walls and tuck them into empty corners here and there, and of course, I also use them on open shelving for hiding clutter and storing all our things that I’d like to keep tucked away.

More country-house decorating ideas: How to Properly Paint Wall Paneling

Old Traditional Farmhouse Necessity: Built-Ins Everywhere

Pictured Above: Floral Pillow | Bookshelf Lights | Vintage Print | Cabinet Pulls | Rug

If you live in an old house, you know that storage is always at a premium. Some people take drastic measures like converting bedrooms to closet space, but we’ve chosen to tuck built-in shelves and cabinets into every little corner of our fixer-upper home to increase our storage potential. We lined one wall of our living room with a fireplace and bookshelves, added a wall of cabinetry to our back hall mudroom, and even added a cabinet under our stairs for our board games and puzzles. We added bookcases to both our kids’ rooms and added low drawers around the perimeter of our main mudroom to act as a bench and shoe storage. And we’ll keep adding more as time and budget allow. Built-ins not only add storage space, but they also bring so much style, architectural interest, and elegance to any space.