A Cottage Style Colour Scheme

I’ve spent weeks (and a few sleepless nights) deliberating over the cottage-style colour scheme for Blackbird Cottage. Despite my eternal love of blue, I’ve gone in a new direction. So, let’s talk about my choices.

What is a Cottage Style Colour Scheme?

You would know, mostly because I go on about it all the time, that I believe a colour scheme needs to be cohesive. Why? It makes life and rearranging furniture a whole lot easier. You don’t have to buy new accessories to create a new look, you can simply move a few things around.

A cottage-style colour scheme can take on many forms. In Australia, Country Style Magazine has made the white walls, rustic timber furniture and grey sofa a real thing, but I love the more traditional cottage look. A scheme this is slightly eclectic and filled with colour and pattern.

Our cottage was built in 1880 when wallpaper was the wallcovering of choice in more modest homes. This was mostly because putting solid plaster on walls was out of the budget of most builders, so layers of hessian, newspaper and wallpaper were glued to the walls. Over the years, the walls became stained with smoke from the open fires and it was necessary to update the wallpaper to keep the house fresh. This gave us so much insight into the interior fashions of the times, as the process was repeated every few years. Our cottage had more layers than I can count.

My Cottage Style Colour Scheme

I’ve based my scheme on the colours of Australian nature. The William Morris Blackthorn design was the beginning of the scheme. I’ve picked out a range of colours to coordinate but in lighter hues. This way when the eye moves from room to room everything will flow. There may be differing accent colours in each room and new textures such as velvet or jute. But overall, I want the scheme to be olive green, mustard yellow and warm white. For patterns, I’m going with timeless florals and checks again. Because, if the wheel aint broke don’t fix it.

Which, come to think of it, is the colour scheme I chose for our home in the 1990s!! Yes, we had an entire living room painted olive green and a yellowy beige kitchen. I know. I tell you all the time how much I loathe green. . . but maybe I don’t?

With this new scheme, I’ve added regency panelling for the kitchen/diner area. We used this in our dairy renovation (yes, there was green). I loved the cottage vibe it created so we will be using it again in the extension we build onto the cottage. Did I tell you we reconfigured the old skillion and will be using the footprint in a new way? You can more of our initial plans in my first post about the cottage.

The darker rooms of the house (the hall and lounge) will be warm white with these colours used in furniture and accents. The bedrooms will be wallpapered which makes me VERY excited. I also plan to lighten the floors with a limewash stain.

Of course, there are now fixtures, tiles and fittings to pick which will all become part of the overall look for Blackbird Cottage. And no doubt, I will change my mind!