28 English Cottage Style Ideas to Charm Your Inner Jane Austen
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English cottage style embodies charm and grace with its gorgeous floral prints, simple furniture, and relaxed yet dignified design. Inspired by the idyllic English countryside of the early 19th century, this stylish look can be brought into any home, even in urban settings.
Creating a cozy, lived-in feel is key when it comes to English cottage style, with elements like sweet architectural touches, soft colors, layered rugs, and floral wallpaper. Explore our favorite English cottage style ideas to integrate these charming elements into your home, where features like tufted chairs and toile-covered walls will have you swooning as if you’re in a classic romance novel.
Window Nook
The most thoughtfully arranged rooms have a subtle charm that shines even before they are completely furnished. English cottage style is known for its ability to accomplish just that. This comfortable window nook, featuring a cozy built-in seat, drawers for storage, rustic wall planks, decorative corner corbels, and sloping ceilings, creates a serene corner that is full of character. It’s easy to imagine Lizzie Bennet lounging here, lost in a good book.
Statement Piece
In English cottage-style design, even the most modest items can shine when the right elements are positioned around them. Take, for example, this antique pedestal table with its charming peeling paint. It’s the star of the whole room. The other elements filling this space—like the beaded board, shutters, and relaxed banquette cushions—complement its texture beautifully without stealing the spotlight.
Farmhouse Table
Nothing captures the elegant essence of English cottage style quite like mismatched chairs gathered around a long wooden farmhouse table. The vibrant floral wallpaper and an overhead rack brimming with pots and pans create a fun, lively kitchen that’s perfect for welcoming friends and family to the table.
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.
Country Garden Florals
Bundles of bouquets bloom across this bedding in a nod to the floral prints inspired by English cottage style. It’s just one of many ways to bring the glory of a garden inside, but these blossoms last much longer than cut flowers. Planked walls and patinaed pieces are popular, too, in English cottage-style decor. These heavily distressed blue walls check both boxes.
Indoor Patio Furnishings
With clever juxtaposition, items commonly used on patios or in gardens blend seamlessly into an English cottage-style breakfast nook or kitchen. Here, old columns capped in iron urns flank a rickety hutch strung with chicken wire. Within reach, a weathered but welcoming table and chairs provide casual English cottage-style seating. A swath of antique lace, fresh flowers, and a sparkling crystal chandelier add glamour.
Lived-In Look
One of the many appealing elements of English cottage 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Window Shutters
Regency-era English houses often relied on shutters to control sunlight and shield interiors from an unexpected burst of rain or snow. Today, shutters are still considered a distinguished window treatment, especially in rooms where privacy is critical and curtains might seem heavy-handed. This bathroom features interior shutters that can be adjusted to welcome sunlight as well as bygone-era touches like marble flooring, a claw-foot tub, and an assortment of unframed mirrors.
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.
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.
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.
Back to Basics
Sometimes, the most striking schemes are the simplest, as evidenced by this charming nursery swathed in black and ivory. With the color stripped from the space, the focus turns to each lovely piece—from the antique crib painted with a pastoral panel to the weathered tulip shutters and the stately monogrammed Roman shade. Collectively, the pieces make for an elegant but understated nursery that would be equally at home in the English countryside or a metro apartment.
Formal but Unfussy
Even slightly formal spaces, such as a dining room, flourish with a touch of English cottage style, which blends elegance with a relaxed attitude. This dining room, for example, is devoid of frills but certainly not lacking in warmth. Here, high-backed wooden chairs and well-worn upholstered armchairs anchor the space, while an antler chandelier (instead of crystal) adds a nod to the hunt.
Restful Colors
Muted hues—colors hushed by adding black pigment—are common in English cottage-style decor, in part because they usher serenity and elegance into a room. They’re also popular because they allow sparkling finishes to shine. Furniture and kitchen cabinetry are popular places to use these tones. Not only do they add a touch of color, they also conceal scratches and marks.
Beautiful Backdrop
Exposed structural elements, such as angled ceilings and wall paneling, are embraced (and sometimes highlighted) in English cottage-style designs. These beautiful beams and wide-plank wood walls provide a hefty dose of charm and create the perfect backdrop for stately furnishings, layered rugs, and artwork.
English Cottage Style Details
English cottage style murmurs rather than shouts. It’s only upon closer inspection that the details of a space reveal themselves. Case in point: the tufting on the back of this chair is a small detail, 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. In this cozy room, there are plenty of small details to take in, including the leaded glass windows, which provide subtle sophistication.
Toile de Jouy
Perhaps the most recognizable pattern for wallpaper and fabric in English cottage-style designs, 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, where walls, ceilings, and even furniture, are all fair game. Here, utilitarian but intricately decorated black tole trays are a snappy punctuation over the bed.
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.
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.
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 sizeable woven basket into service as a hamper. If these items have to work hard, they might as well be beautiful, too.
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.
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. Meanwhile, 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.
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 beaded-board 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.
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.
In the world of English cottage-style design, every well-loved book and softly faded floral print tells a story—much like the pages of Sense and Sensibility. By embracing soft, romantic details and laidback charm, you can create a space that feels as warm and inviting as a cozy Hampshire cottage. Whether you’re curling up with Pride and Prejudice in a window seat or simply enjoying the quiet beauty of a sofa-side wildflower bouquet, your home can reflect the elegance, comfort, and enduring grace of Austen’s world—no invitation required.
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