Rustic simplicity that is unpretentious, friendly and welcoming is the mainstay of country home decor. Typically made by craftspeople, country styled furniture has a sturdy, dependable look. Though flexible enough to include handmade pieces, natural materials, reproductions and timeworn antiques, country styled furniture will rarely use delicate designs or have a formal appearance.
Buying one style of country furniture for your whole house is an easy, safe and time-saving option. While you are unlikely to make a decorating gaffe, the very coordinated sameness of every room can get boring after a while. Better to decorate every room with a mix and match of complementary country-styled furniture.
When looking for furniture for your country styled home, it's best to focus on certain distinct country characteristics.
Wood is good. It is the staple of country styled decor. Hand-carved country furniture made of wood such as maple, oak, pine, walnut, cherry, hickory and exotic woods can fill every room with welcoming warmth. Look for furniture that is at least partly made of wood in combination with other natural materials such as wicker, straw cane.
Rustic, country styled furniture is typically plain and simple with straight lines, round knobs and plenty of chips and scratches that impart a certain character to every piece. The wood can be stained or natural, but is very rarely or never glossed to a high sheen.
Country-styled furniture is seldom made with synthetic, man-made materials and garish colors and glass tables, modern shiny metals or highly polished surfaces are rarely seen.
Here are few suggestions for giving each room in your house an inviting country look
Bedroom
Set the tone for your country-styled bedroom with a beautiful four-poster, canopy bed and complete the look with rustic wardrobes and smaller pieces of furniture in traditional shapes and materials. If your bedroom is on the smaller side, keep other furniture to a minimum.
Kitchen
Classic country kitchen decor includes kitchen cabinets made of natural materials, aged surfaces and round or ceramic knobs. Kitchen cabinets in natural-finished or painted pine add cozy rustic warmth to any kitchen. Pine cabinets with a distressed color finish can add distinctive beauty to any country kitchen, whereas antique reproduction cabinets add old-world charm.
Living room
Country style living room furniture exudes warmth and relaxation. Splurge on one or two eye-catching pieces; it could be a stunning centre table or a magnificent sofa set in a romantic country style or a seriously rustic country style. A grandfather chair is a charming addition and adds timeless grace to any country styled living room.
During all the governmental upheavals that took place before the Republic was permanently established, France had little opportunity to do original work in the area of decorative pursuits. Well satisfied with past accomplishment, 19th Century French decoration offered little that was new until designers sought to create a new style by deliberate neglect of tradition.
Art Nouveau is no longer new in France or elsewhere and went through many phases in its persistent endeavor to produce something altogether different from the accomplishment of the past. The Exposition of Decorative Arts, held in Paris in the summer of 1925, offered little that surprised any one familiar with the various cults that are striving by juxtaposition of lines, planes, and color combinations to gain a new mode of artistic expression, typical of the new era in modern innovation and world progress generally.
The consensus of opinion was that more was accomplished in French textiles, especially printed textiles, than in any other department of decorative art. Tattle that was applicable to modern living and especially to the modern home was shown, but much was done in the working out of color effects that were suggestive for the more striking decoration of rooms not constantly lived in, such as lunch and tea rooms, restaurants and clubs.
The important feature of the trend in modern Country Furniture seems to be the addition of decorative lines which have little relation to structural forms. We find this particularly in furniture design. Other features are the accenting of highly polished richly grained wood surfaces and much use of silver and gold in large areas.
Wild animal rugs are much used on floors, fabric patterns have a tendency toward cubistic design and ceilings and over-mantel paintings are used to exhibit the work of modern French painters. Metal work, glassware, and lighting fixture have been given much thought, and due to the fact that structural qualities in these materials are less important, the freedom shown in their design has been more national.
France today offers the Country Furniture the unsurpassed accomplishments of her great historical periods, but is also courageously if often unsuccessfully, striving to bring into some useful form her glimpses of what shall be in future days.
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