Decorate Your Home With Shabby Chic Style
The name says it all – shabby chic is a style that's supposed to look sophisticated yet timeworn at the same time. In fact, shabby chic incorporates elements of cottage design. The style features weathered furniture with pretty pastel florals. White is an important color to set the look off. Add charm to your home with shabby chic décor with the following elements.
Painted Furniture
While white is the foundational color of shabby chic décor, the goal is to create a mix of seemingly unrelated furniture instead of a matched set. Even if you have a matched set, you can create this style by painting some of the pieces. For example, keep your dining room table in its natural finish, but paint the chairs and sideboard different colors. Alternatively, select furnishings already painted and outfit your room that way. Either way, choose a color scheme and stick to it for cohesion. So in the above example, paint all the chairs white and the sideboard a pastel hue.
Floral Designs
In that vein, floral prints can serve as the inspiration for your color scheme. Say you have an antique quilt with flower designs. Use the colors in the flowers to bring through in the rest of the bedroom. You can use one of the colors as the inspiration for painting your bedside tables and another of the colors for accent décor. You can also continue this style in the yard with actual flowers. For example, install a white picket fence and plant pastel flowers at the base.
Weathered Wood
A hallmark of shabby chic design is the weathered look. It's relatively easy to pull this off with wood pieces. For example, you can utilize a distressed painting style to make your wooden furniture look like they've been around for generations. You can also use this technique on door and window frames. It's also possible to buy furnishing and accent pieces finished with a distressed look.
Light Fixtures
The shabby chic theme should continue in your choice of light fixtures. Here's another area where you can focus on the distressed or timeworn patina. For example, choose ornate pendant or wall lights with paint that looks slightly worn off. Home and Garden TV also describes a shabby chic room with a chandelier with metal worked to look like flowers. With this design style, ornate is the way to go, so stay away from lighting fixtures with clean lines. Instead, look for arched metal and even crystal pendants. Imagine what you'd see in the drawing room of a Jane Austen novel – that's what you want for your light fixtures.
Choose furniture and accessories that resound with the cottage charm typical of the shabby chic style.