6 Must-Have Items for Your New Cottage-Style Home

When you’re investing in a new, possibly custom-made cottage-style home, there's a ton of potential for decorating with upcycled, vintage, salvaged, and thrifted items. There are so many possibilities to consider, given the more laid-back, elegant nature of the cottage lifestyle, and the interior design aesthetic that it inspires. To get your mind buzzing, here are six must-have items for any cottage-style home.

Photo by Annie Spratt

1. A wood-burning stove

When you’re living the cottage lifestyle, you want to embrace an older, more natural style of living. One way to do this is to use natural, energy-efficient, and environmentally-conscious ways of cooking and cleaning. If you want to mix this need with a beautiful appliance, you need to invest in a wood-burning stove immediately. Not only are they uniquely stunning, but the wood-grilled and baked flavors that you’ll unlock in your diet will make you wonder why you ever put off buying a wood-burning stove in the first place. Just make sure you approach the cooking process with patience, as it can be a bit tricky for newcomers to perfect. The wood-burning stove can also make a stellar addition to any custom cottage builder’s project that you’re investing in. 

 

2. Flowers, flowers, flowers

No cottage home is complete without an abundance of flowers about the property. Getting fresh flowers to decorate your home every week will do wonders for spicing up both your interior decor and your life. Find a nearby florist to fall in love with, and you’ll be bringing home beautiful bouquets every time you can. As we’ll discuss later on, floral prints are almost a necessity when decorating a cottage-style home, so the way the flowers will compliment them (and vice versa) is reason enough to invest in some fresh, pleasant flowers for your home now and then. 

 

3. A freestanding, roll-top bath

Similar to the wood-burning stove, a freestanding roll-top bath throws one back to simpler, often more elegant times in home decor. Now that you’re embracing the relaxing feel of a cottage lifestyle, you’ll get infinite pleasure from soaking in a bath for hours. Sprinkling in some bath bombs, natural lavender flowers, and other amazing scents that will elevate the bathing experience! While freestanding roll-top baths can be a bit of a pain to set up, the effort is well worth it. Plus, the insanely aesthetic nature of the freestanding roll-top bath has yet to be topped by any modern bath competitors. Check your local architectural salvage companies before buying new.

4. DIY furniture

Cottage lovers and DIY fans tend to be of a similar breed. Both love the idea of taking something with an older, lived-in charm and making it feel new again. Adding a little DIY flair to thrifted furniture pieces can give you a creative outlet for your decor ideas, and help you make your cottage home’s indoor spaces feel unique. As long as you know how to find materials for your furniture for free (or on the cheap), you can also save tons of money by going this route as opposed to something new. If you invest in older, solid-wood pieces, they can even become cherished family heirlooms after a few decades of use. 

 

5. Floral prints

While floral prints look fantastic in practically any home, they look especially appropriate in cottage-style homes - especially vintage botanical prints. If you want to decorate your walls with a tapestry and deck out your furniture with beautiful slip-covers, you should consider getting fabrics and prints that focus on a floral aesthetic too. Not only will they elevate the beauty of the rooms they’re placed in, but they will compliment the older, lived-in, and elegant aesthetic that you’re going for inside of your cottage-style home’s decor. 

 

 

6. The perfect fireplace

Lastly, a cozy, quality fireplace will greatly complement the wood-burning stove that you’re now itching to invest in. You will not always have sunshine and cool breezes to keep you comfortable in your cottage-style home, so having a fireplace to enjoy on chillier nights is highly recommended. There’s a reason you almost always see fireplaces connected to cottage-style homes, after all. Be sure to consider what type of fireplace you need before investing, however, and be certain to consider the environmental impact your use of the fireplace can have on your local ecosystem. 

Live out your cottage lifestyle dreams

With these six items, you’ll be living in your dream cottage in no time. There are infinite possibilities when it comes to decorating and stocking your cottage home to your taste, however, so never feel bad about experimenting with more out-there ideas. If you’re getting a custom-made cottage home, bringing this creativity to the table becomes especially important!