French Country Home Decorating on a Budget
© L.C. Dumke
If you've flipped through a decorating magazine or watched a home decor show lately, you've noted that French Country is the latest decorating craze.
What is French Country Décor?
French Country emulates the style you might find in a cottage in rural France. Popular elements include rooster motifs, wrought iron furnishings sporting elegant, whimsical curves, and plastered-surface walls washed in butter-yellow paint. The sleekness of a primitive farm table, for instance, could be softened up with a curvy iron chandelier. Rough, exposed ceiling beams and aged terra cotta or brick tiles on the floor complete the look.
Do-it-Yourself Ideas
A home filled with genuine French furnishings and accessories would be beautiful, but incompatible with modest household budgets. Instead, here a few ways to bring a little more Provence into your home without spending a fortune.
- Place an inexpensive, wrought iron bench in the foyer decorated with romantic throw pillows. (To age a new iron piece, you can purchase spray-on rust treatments at home improvement stores.)
- Wallpaper a dining room (from the chair rail up) with a classic design, like black and white toile.
- Add lace panel curtains on windows where absolute cover for privacy is not required.
- Paint with French hues like mustard, celadon, salmon pink or cornflower blue.
- Add inexpensive accessories, such as a black iron wall planter in the bathroom to hold hand towels.
- Whitewash old ladderback chairs.
- Paint cabinets and rag over them with a glaze. This works nicely with a base coat of cream paint, brushed over lightly with a mocha-brown glaze.
- Suspend a pot rack from the kitchen ceiling to hang pots and pans, especially if they're copper.
Online and TV French Country Resources
A simple search for "French Country" on Home and Garden Television's website yields many photos of French Country home makeovers, and tips for creating your own.
Check out Decorator's Boutique, "Your French Country Online Resource." It directs you to sites where you can peruse French furniture, accents, linens and wall coverings, and offers great tips for your decorating endeavors.
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