How to Add French Country Style to Your Home
Ready to add French Country Style to your home? Many of the questions that you ask me focus on how to create a French Country style in your home. Spring is a great time to restyle one or more areas at home, to reflect the new, fresh season. French Country is European elegance mixed with rustic, farm house style. It’s the perfect balance of beauty and comfort; graceful and rustic, it looks equally fabulous in country homes, and elegant city residences. Sure, French Country furniture, toile and Provencial fabrics all play a part, but you can update to get the French Country look by adding a few well chosen pieces from FrenchGardenHouse. Here’s how:
Add a Pop of Country Color. Often, just a few pieces will bring that country look to a room. A checked dishtowel, a great blue & white cafe au lait bowl, and one of these decorative and spring colored Antique Aqua French Canning Jars can bring French Country joy to your kitchen in a flash. Antique jars like this are so useful, use them for storage, then bring them outdoors on a beautiful day to hold a fresh bouquet of Chamomille from the garden.
Add Natural Accents. The French have had a love of paniers or baskets since they started making them by hand in the 11th century. Each region has its own specialty in creating hand crafted baskets, French men and women have used baskets for centuries to carry the daily marketing home, to bring vegetables and fruits from their potager to their cuisine, to harvest grapes, olives, hold chickens, and display goods for sale at the weekly outdoor markets. Use baskets to their advantage in your home for a country accent…perfect for storage of linens, towels, books, magazines, and so much more. I am always thrilled to find good looking antique baskets for FrenchGardenHouse, as they are one of the hardest working antiques I know of. I am sharing some latest finds from France, and it was so gorgeous in the garden that I took these shots there, but don’t be fooled, these baskets also work hard inside your home, and they look absolutely smashing, too!
This basket is a traditional woven splint basket, as you can see it looks wonderful in the garden. Useful to corral pots, seed packets and tools as you work in the sun, too.
Another basket, used in France for decades, here it is holding a bottle of wine, a few baguettes and spring’s bright green blossoms. Take one for a picnic, whether you sit on a blanket on your own back lawn or go to the lake, this beauty will hold all the ingredients for a delicious meal.
French Baskets come in many shapes and sizes, here, still another type of Market Basket from France. I’ve focused on market baskets in this blog post, but the we have all sorts of baskets from France that will lend a wonderful French Country air to your rooms, while offering beautiful storage options.
Add Antiques & Vintage. Antiques and vintage are an important part of country French decor. To enhance the European character of a room, a few antique pieces of furniture set the stage. A collection of dishes displayed on your hutch, whether they are heirloom majolica or simple French country plates, are decorative, and again, quite useful.
Gorgeous Barbotine, or Majolica from France makes a stunning display, and pieces like these Asparagus cradles and plates are sought after by collectors for their vibrant, rich colors, their usefulness at the table, and their stunning graphic visual impact. When displayed on a hutch in your dining room or kitchen, they tell everyone who enters “this home speaks fluent French!”
The opposite of their colorful cousins, these simple Antique White French Plates set a lovely French Country table, inside, or out. Together with vintage French glassware and country linens, even a simple meal of salad and bread becomes festive. Displayed on a rack with your collection of antique ironstone, they offer a graphic impact as wall art, too.
I hope you will take the step to creating some French Country Charm in your home this season. We are uncrating many more French antiques with country charm this week, so please check our shop for Our Latest Finds
Shop for the best in French Antiques, furniture with the patina of age, vintage accessories to delight you and your family & friends, and French Country utilitarian pieces. Treasures that make your home fresh, beautiful, inspirational and uniquely yours. Visit our shop FrenchGardenHouse.com.!
