Rustic Farmhouse Design Ideas

There's something about the rustic farmhouse decor style that evokes an aura of comfort that can't be matched by other interior design motifs. Whether you want to remodel your entire home in this rustic style or just make a few of your rooms look like you lifted them out of a countryside farmhouse, there are a variety of design options at your disposal. In this guide, we'll introduce you to some simple ways that you can make your urban home as relaxing and welcoming as a bonafide rural farmhouse.

Use Weathered Wood

Wherever you use it, weathered wood is one of the best materials you can use to give your home a rustic look. You might want to install a few simple wooden shelves on your walls, or you may want to try a weathered wood coffee table or TV stand. This material also looks great in the kitchen, and you can deploy a weathered wood table in your breakfast nook or use this material for your kitchen drawers. One place where you want your wood to look new and finished, however, is your flooring.

Try a Chalkboard in Your Kitchen

If you've ever visited a farmer's market or bought produce or dairy from a farm, you know that farmers often use chalkboards to inform their customers about the items that they offer and the prices that they charge. While you probably won't have many hungry urbanites breaking down your doors for a sip of raw milk or some fresh rutabagas, you can still evoke the feeling of a genuine farmhouse if you install a floor-to-ceiling chalkboard on one of your kitchen walls.

Once your chalkboard is in place, you can cover it with inspirational messages or leave notes for your family. If you have kids, they will love to flex their art skills on your new rustic chalkboard.

Use Sliding Doors in Your Bedroom

Big sliding doors are iconic of rustic farmhouses. In many cases, interior designers mount these doors on heavy-duty tracks, and they use reclaimed wood or leave the thick planks on these doors unfinished. One great place to deploy these sliding doors is in your bedroom; you can use a wooden sliding door to block off your bathroom from your bedroom, and you can install identical doors on the other side of your bedroom to close off your walk-in closet.

If you want your high-quality sliding doors to look truly rustic, use a variety of different shades of wood in each door. Also, don't forget to make the wheels on the door tracks big and noticeable.

Expose Your Rafters

In most modern homes, roof rafters are concealed behind layers of drywall and insulation. However, exposed, raw wood powerfully evokes the farmhouse aesthetic, which means that you'll want to outfit at least part of your home with these types of roof supports.

If a ceiling area in your home comes to a point, that room would be an ideal place to deploy exposed rafters. When it comes to these rustic rafters, the bigger your beams, the better, and you may want to choose a different grain or colour of wood than your actual ceiling to accentuate your rafters even more.

Exposed rafters serve an obvious aesthetic purpose, but they can also be incredibly useful. For instance, they serve as the perfect places for hanging chandeliers, and you can even use your exposed rafters to hang a swinging fabric chair or a rope climb for your kids.

Set Up an All-White Room

If you lived in a farmhouse, you would likely use whitewash for practically every interior and exterior surface. In a more contemporary setting, you have more sophisticated methods at your disposal when it comes to deploying the colour white throughout your home, but even if you use high-quality paint and expensive decor items, the aesthetic effect is the same as it would be in a rustic farmhouse.

Whether you pick your bedroom, living room, or guest room when you're looking for a space to fill with white, make sure that this neutral colour takes up almost every square inch of the room. Dark wood floors and a wooden bedside table or two are fine, but when it comes to area rugs, bedspreads, and upholstery, make it white as the driven snow.

Don't forget your walls when you're painting everything white, and keep the ceiling the same hue to provide a feeling of expansiveness in your room. You might want to finish things off with a pure white headboard and a white chest at the end of your bed.

Fill Your Kitchen with Mason Jar Lights

Farmers have used mason jars for decades to can fruit and other items that they want to preserve. While you already know that these glass jars can serve dozens of different uses, you may be unaware that you can even use mason jars for lighting in your kitchen.

There are several different ways that you can go about the process of filling your kitchen with mason jars, but you might want to start by dangling about ten LED lights over your kitchen island. Then, all you'll need to do is cut holes in the lids of the mason jars that you want to hang and run the LED electrical cords through these holes to set up your mason jar lights.

Try using different sizes and colours of mason jars to create a diverse look. You can even hang your LED lights at different heights to make your new light fixture look even more rustic. If you leave your kitchen windows or door open, your mason jar lights will sway slightly from side to side whenever a breeze blows through.