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French Country, Read Properly

Not roosters and sunflowers. The real thing is cooler, quieter and far more restrained than its reputation — and much easier to live with.

An old French kitchen in Versailles with aged wooden cabinetry, a plain table, bread and fruit

French country has a reputation problem, and the reputation is largely American, largely from the 1980s, and largely wrong. Sunflowers, roosters, saturated Provençal yellow and blue, toile on every available surface. It is a real decorating style. It is a decorating style about France rather than the way French rural houses actually look.

The real thing is quieter than its reputation, and considerably easier to live in.

What it actually is

Limewashed or plastered walls, usually a cool off-white. Stone or terracotta underfoot. Furniture in unpainted oak, or in chalky paint worn through at the edges. Linen, undyed or nearly so. Very little pattern. A great deal of daylight, and rooms arranged around where the light falls rather than around a television.

A sparse chateau interior at Chenonceau: one wooden table on a grey stone floor, deep shadow and empty space
One table, a stone floor, and a great deal of nothing. The elegance is in what was left out.Photograph — Unsplash

It is restrained, and it is cool — which is the main thing separating it from farmhouse. Both use wood and white. Farmhouse leans warm, casual and sturdy; French country leans cool, formal and light. Put a cream wall in a French country room and the whole thing quietly collapses into something else.

Five moves

1. Cool the whites. Chalk, oyster, bone, a faint grey-green. Not cream, not magnolia. If the white has yellow in it, you are heading for farmhouse.

2. One curve per room. A cabriole leg, a bowed drawer front, an arched mirror, a single round-backed chair. The elegance in this style comes almost entirely from one curve set against a great many straight lines. Two curves is a scheme. Four is a period drama.

3. Linen, washed and unironed. Curtains that hang slightly heavy. Cloth that creases and stays creased. Crispness is the enemy here — the style depends on things looking used.

4. Unglazed or half-glazed clay. Terracotta, stoneware, anything with a matte or partly matte surface. High-gloss ceramic reads modern and will fight everything around it.

Washed linen draped on a pale surface in raking window light, creases left in
Washed, and left creased. Crispness is the enemy here.Photograph — Unsplash
Unglazed clay pottery on a wooden surface with sunlight falling across it
Matte clay. High-gloss ceramic reads modern and will fight everything around it.Photograph — Unsplash

5. Restrict pattern to one item. A single toile cushion in an otherwise plain room reads unmistakably French. Six read as fancy dress. This is the rule people break first, and it is the one that does the most damage.

On metal

Brass, aged, sparing, and never polished — a little tarnish is the point. Chrome and brushed nickel belong to a different room entirely, and stainless steel in any quantity will pull the whole scheme towards a modern kitchen no matter what else you do.

Aged, unpolished brass hardware on a carved wooden door at Saint-Sulpice in Paris
Aged, sparing, never polished. A little tarnish is the point.Photograph — Unsplash

The idea underneath

French country is not about looking rustic. It is about looking unbothered: expensive materials treated casually, and cheap materials treated with respect. Stone floors with nothing on them. Good linen left creased. A plain room with one beautiful curve in it.

Get the whites cool and the pattern restricted, and most of the rest follows on its own.

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