The French Home Decor Style

When decorating your home in the French aesthetic, one must decide whether it is to be an urban or country decor theme. The difference between the two is pronounced, and you'll want to chose one or the other.

The urban French decor stresses the aristocratic taste for ornate furniture and mirrors, shiny and gilded surfaces, framed portraits of nobility and the last French general to be victorious, and imported goods from around the world. The pretense of a cosmopolitan sophistication is important to capture in urban French decor. The Parisian mentality depends on believing themselves to be at the center of the civilized world with a responsibility to export their own assumed enlightenment to those so unfortunate as to be born of any other culture. Books of french literature and the grammar of the French language should be displayed on shelves, along side artifacts from west and north Africa and Polynesia, especially those made to look as if they were poached from endangered species. As fashion is also an urban French obsession, be sure to create at least one room that is easily redecorated to reflect what ever colors and styles are considered "chic" at any given moment.

In contrast, French country decor is very down to earth. It is, in fact, a celebration of the French land itself and of subsisting on it, and therefor stresses a universally appealing love of nature, and the joys of family, hearth, and home. French country decor appears lived in. Furniture is more practical and worn, metals are rusted rather than shiny, the stone fire place is the focal point of the home, with old fashioned iron utensils hung on either side, and the mantle decorated with copper pots, herbs, wire baskets, Chinoiserie pottery, and assorted folk craft. An armoire with distressed wood is where you store linens.

Doors and windows are sunken, tall, and narrow with flowering vines growing around them and wooden shutters. The home is filled with fresh wild flowers and garden grown roses, which are also featured on delicately printed fabrics. Lavender is the favorite flower, and the color is also used as an accent in the decor. Window boxes planted with geraniums and lavender are ways to bring the garden in closer. Bowls of dried lavender and rose petals sent the room, and every available pot in the house is filled with fresh cut blooms.

Roosters are the motif for French country decor accent pieces. They are featured in wall hangings, small figurines, and painted on ceramic tiles. White linen curtains that allow the morning sunshine to illuminate the room naturally, as do pairs of glass doors. Toile fabric, cotton or linen of a very pale color with a single contrasting color in a large motif, is used liberally in French country decor.

The architectural features are very much part of the decor style's love of contrast in general. Stone floors with cotton or wool rugs and plaster walls with exposed rough wooden beams set the trend for natural looking wooden furniture with delicate cotton lace covers, and wire baskets filled with fragile eggs and fresh fruit. Chairs are usually wooden with ladder backs or vertical slots, and woven seats.

The French love of perfume is reflected in the collection of beautifully shaped glass applicators and bottles arranged on the vanity table. A painted porcelain washing bowl and pitcher placed on a carved wooden table with a lace trimmed white or cream colored cotton cloth, add the perfect touch to a bedroom where you dream of the French countryside.