36 Gorgeous shabby chic interior spaces

Shabby Chic style is a beautiful look and can be incorporated into any home for a fun and whimsy design aesthetic. The basic principle of shabby chic style is a look that is unstructured and lacking in formal rules; a timeless aesthetic which can add an effortless elegance to your home. With salvaged furnishings, handicrafts and vintage textiles that are available not only in flea markets, but also in retail shops (typically as reproductions), you don’t have to search high and low for that perfect piece. You may even have a diamond in the rough right under your nose, a derelict piece of furniture just waiting to be whitewashed and restored. That’s the beauty of shabby chic style, it’s budget-friendly and easy to acquire. Here are some suggestions of ways you can achieve the look.

Select seating you can sink into such as bean bag chairs, use a well-worn table, antique frames for art (ornate frames and framed mirrors), give a once formal seating a shabby chic makeover, light up a room with a chandelier, set the table with linen napkins, create an airy, beachy ambiance in the bedroom, infuse shabby chic style into your outdoor spaces, make use of well-worn storage options (they don’t need to be confined to just the bedroom, add them to an entrance hall, feminine home office or dining room as elegant storage options), use fine china to add whimsical sophistication when entertaining such as serving tea in vintage tea cups.

Photos: Undicilandia

46 Inspiring interiors showcasing shabby chic style

The shabby chic look usually has a lot of white, neutrals, and bright interiors. Characteristics of the beach life, comfortably worn and casual interiors bring the shabby chic life into your interiors effortlessly. The main characteristic of shabby chic interior design is aged and distressed furniture. It could be chosen for its appearance of age with all these signs of wear and tear or it can be distressed to achieve the appearance of an antique. That is a quite soft style which fits perfectly for cottages but can be used at your home too. It easily can add a feminine touch to any interior and make it quite unique. Here are some tips to bring the casual elegance of shabby chic details into the interiors of your home.

How Do You Shabby?

Go On a Furniture Safari: Stop by the local flea market, salvage shops, second hand stores or find an Estate sale in your neighborhood, also consider Craigslist and EBay. You are on the hunt for older pieces with curved lines and an undeniable vintage flair. Shabby Chic furniture tends to be on the large side; comfortable, soft and inviting. For those that are creative; painting and stressing a furniture piece to reflect the time worn look will help to achieve your end goal.

Colorize Softly: White is recommended for the walls as it’s subtle and provides the perfect backdrop to the layers of soft pastels that will be interwoven; pastel pink, light beige, egg shell blues and other romantic combinations bring the color scheme full circle. Shabby wallpaper – which incorporates a floral motif – can be found in most stores and would also work well, as it will play into the vintage elegance of this design.

Bring In The Fabrics: No rules to follow here as long as it compliments your decorating scheme overall. Consider softer fabrics that you might find in your Grandma’s attic, cotton, toiles, lace and chenille in beautiful prints, stripes, flowers or other patterns. Anything goes. Use fabrics for slip covers, arm chair covers, as well as for your window treatments.

Accessorizing: There is a certain sparkle to be added to a Shabby Chic flair, consider a beautiful chandelier that dances on the ceiling when the sunlight hits it, or picture frames that glisten with silver or gold – just enough that it will catch your eye. Toss pillows made with a vintage fabric on the sofa, and use a timeless throw made of vintage materials. You can’t go wrong with fresh flowers in crystal vases or live green plants.

If you are trying to recreate the casual essentials of shabby chic in your home, these tips will help to get you started. Keep in mind this design style is supposed to look timeless and comfortable. While you can have formal details, the overall aesthetic should make you want to escape the busy world outside and retreat into soft tones, comfortable fabrics, and a vintage vibe inside your home. This is a beautiful trending style and we have plenty of different spaces decorated in shabby chic that will hopefully bring some interesting ideas and inspiration to your design project.

Do you love shabby chic? Have you have adopted or planning to adopt shabby chic interiors into your home? Please let us know in the comments section below!

Colorful shabby-chic style infused into beach refuge

In the countryside of Caceres, Spain, with views to the Sierra de Gredos mountain range, is a quite refuge owned by Carola Morales, owner of fashion firm Flamenco and her husband. Spotted on Nuevo Estilo, the home is a vacation getaway for family and friends, located only an hour and a half outside of Madrid, the city where they live. The owner had a hand in designing this colorful beach home along with interior designer Mausha Mersa. The interiors were expanded to meet family needs with new rooms and storage elements, which helped add comfort for rest and relaxation. Carola chose the fabrics and finishes in the decoration, which came easy to her with her 14 years at the forefront of the fashion world. Infusing shabby chic style into the home, the originality and uniqueness comes from the same way the designer designs her fashions. There are pieces scattered throughout the home purchased from other countries or found in antique shops, salvage yards and pop-art stores.

43 Brilliant and inspiring shabby chic interiors

Shabby Chic interior design entails distressed finishes, soft as well as delicate colors, mixing checks, stripes, and flower-patterned fabrics, using a rumpled but neat look, and using home decor that is worn but also elegant. If you want to decorate with a Shabby Chic style in your home, use mostly vintage decor and comfortable slip-covered furniture, and try mixing new decor that appears old and worn. The end result is a delightfully decorated space that features a comfortable, lived-in look. Shabby Chic decorating ideas are abundant; you will probably find fresh cut flowers, antique lace tablecloths, scented candles and crystals hanging from the antique chandelier. All in all, you will be comfortable and at home with Shabby Chic if you enjoy a soft, floral, feminine style of decor mixed with edgy vintage elements. Below we feature a collection 43 of the most unique and inspiring Shabby Chic interiors from homes across the globe. Let us know what you think, which one most inspires you?

Rural shabby chic in Provence

Rural shabby chic, warm are the strong points of this gorgeous home in Provence, France. Owned by an English antiques dealer, Josephine Ryan the restored abandoned village house is filled with beautiful details from her shop. The home had been uninhabited for a long time and required hard work and imagination. The result is inspired simplicity, an eclectic home packed with small stories of objects experienced and worn by the passage of years, interspersed with new pieces of high quality. The home is a mix between cave and a rural chateau, Josephine defines the home as “a mix of modern, rusty and extravagant”.

Currently the home is being used as a vacation rental and for film shootings. To inquire about either, please follow the link here.

These rudimentary stairs lead from the dining room to the living room. Glass topped wrought iron round table. The lamp is made with a dark gray shade mounted on an 18th century architectural element.

The table in the dining room stands on a cream coloured cement tile rug.

Opening onto a corner of the garden, the dining room’s main features are original such as the reddish clay flooring, wooden beams, and stone fireplace. Distressed Swedish wooden chairs surround the farm style table which was custom made.

The vaulted ceiling in the kitchen was restored. Cupboards and tiled worktop were custom made.

In the bathroom corner, mottled pottery from the region is arranged on distressed shelves.

Twin iron beds from a convent in the children’s room located above the guest room.

Shabby-chic gingerbread house

Sandra Foster’s Catskills, NY dream home does not include a bathroom or a kitchen. It was a complete labor of love to turn it into her personal shabby-chic retreat. She lives, with her husband, across the river in their 1971 mobile home that does include a bath and kitchen, but this place is truly inspiring. She did the renovation of this old hunting cabin and furnished it herself for $3,000. She transformed the 9 x 14 cabin into a beautiful Victorian cottage, a space all for herself. She used vintage columns that cost $60 each and floorboards for the exterior facade and wavy glass windows. The home was painted green and white, the front door was left in its original vintage style. Sandra has her own blog that has more about her life and her home here.

Filled with tissue paper flower-like garlands that Sandra herself created and flea market finds such as the $15 crystal chandelier gracing the sitting area.

Sandra built this china cabinet herself; she found the arched French doors for $15 each at a yard sale.

The mirror was another yard sale find for $22 and was painted off-white.

The bedroom loft is only accessible by ladder.

The chandelier over the bed and the bedding from the Rachel Ashwell collection are finds from Target.

Everything on this porch has either been salvaged or is a flea market find, with the exception of the glued on garlands in the window box that come fromdoityourselfchic.com.

The front porch was extended out from the original design.

Prior to being renovated, the small cabin was just a 9 x10 foot box that had a porch roof supported by white willow tree trunks.

This stream links the cottage to the trailer that Sandra shares with her husband.

The trailer has been aptly named “Groove Tube” due to its interior decor with hues of gold and avocado-green.

The interior of the trailer.

Photos: Trevor Tondro

Beachside cottage in Kangaroo Valley

The resident of this cozy beachside cottage is artist, stylist and online retailer Lisa Madigan – plus one husband and two devoted Dalmatians. Four years ago Lisa discovered this perfect little cottage in Kangaroo Valley on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia and completely fell in love. She was so taken with this special place; she turned her life upside-down to acquire it, and moved from Sydney just to live here. The cottage was in need of some serious repairs so the pair took to it straight away – scrubbing the beautiful original wide floorboards, painting all the walls white, renovating the kitchen – even pouring their own concrete for the bench tops.

The cottage was built in the 1880′s, and was originally home to The Kangaroo Valley Times – for this reason Lisa refers to the place affectionately as her ‘little paper house’. Several months ago she held a ‘cottage exhibition’ of her artworks in the house. Lisa is currently working towards her 10th solo exhibition, ‘Aphrodisia,’ then she has a dream to exhibit in New York sometime over the next 24 months. All the photography and styling of this beautiful home has been done by Lisa Madigan.

A look inside Lisa’s paint studio.

Farmhouse style gets a mix of vintage flair

This beautiful and stylish residence was once an abandoned and ruined farmhouse in Ampurdan, Spain. The farmhouse has since been renovated by the very talented interior designer Eva Martinez, who turned it into a dream home that the owners were longing for. “I had to start from scratch, but the best thing was they gave carte blanche to make all the decisions. They wanted a family home with a smooth distribution that would also be comfortable,” explains Martinez. Despite being in the countryside, the owners wanted to get away from the traditional, rustic style, going instead for a more simple and contemporary aesthetic.

In terms of decor, Martinez went for a great mix of styles, using basic antiques together with a fantastic collection of contemporary art. The neutral tones and antique finishes create the perfect canvas that fuses together the different styles of industrial, vintage and contemporary. The plastered finish on the walls and the polished concrete floors give an attractive artisanal touch to the entire house. Some elements in the home were preserved, such as the wood beams of the bedroom, the niches in the lounge and the vaulted ceilings which adds warmth and character to the spaces. The designer also decided to open windows in the living room to let more of the natural light in. One very important space to the owner’s was the porch, since they loved to spend a lot of their family time outdoors. The designer made this space really special by visually eliminating the side wall to the porch by adding large vinyl photographs. Via

Eclectic living in this colorful house of turquoise

When asked their decorating style, most people would say they are eclectic, meaning they like a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. Having an eclectic interior design style is the way to go if you just can’t choose one style. This fabulous house is an excellent example of eclectic design, which encompasses a variety of periods and styles and is harmoniously brought together through the use of color, texture, shape and finish. Eclectic style is about mixing rather than matching, though all design elements should coordinate to achieve a look that is fresh and avant-garde. Eclectic style is the fingerprint of innovation and creativity. Borrowing from different sources and periods, eclectic style is a highly individualized style and can easily be changed on a whim.

Bright and bold splashes of turquoise have been accented throughout this home to give it a unique sense of style. What do you think? Did they pull it off?

Photos: Light Locations