Cottagecore is an internet-based lifestyle, interior design, and gardening movement inspired by a romanticized view of country life. Its romanticized aesthetics emphasize natural materials, healthy pleasures, homemade crafts, gardening, and other aspects of pastoral domesticity.
This comfortable design appeals to the collective modern fantasy of escaping to a lodge in the woods or a cottage in a meadow, absent the reality and hardships of rural life.
What Is Cottagecore?
Cottagecore is a charming aesthetic and design trend that embraces a return to a simpler, rural way of life, celebrating nature, handcrafted beauty, and the nostalgia of countryside living. Its design features old and handcrafted things like apparel, candles, furniture, and needlework.
Cottagecore also promotes self-sufficiency by teaching homesteading techniques such as vegetable gardening, baking from scratch, and rearing poultry in the backyard.
Key Characteristics of Cottagecore
- A wistful, romanticized look at rustic simplicity
- Emphasizes physical and sensory pleasures, comfort, and domesticity.
- Prioritizing handcrafted and vintage items with a story
- Embracing nature with a focus on sustainability, and bringing the outdoors inside, with flowers, plants, and natural components
- Celebration of arts and crafts such as knitting, sewing, embroidery, crochet, baking, gardening, and candle-making.
- Focus on self-sufficiency, such as collecting mushrooms.
A Brief History of Cottagecore
Cottagecore became a trend in 2018, with influencers glamorizing country life and generating bucolic imagery that serves as an escape from the stresses of modern life.
Cottagecore, like previous historical aesthetic movements that emerged as a reaction to industrialization and technology, is simply the newest version of an age-old desire for “simpler times.”
The Arts and Crafts movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a response to the Industrial Revolution and Victorian-era wealth.
The countercultural movement of the 1960s, with its back-to-nature, DIY mentality that persisted into the 1970s, was partially a rejection of capitalism.
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Cottagecore Lifestyle and Design
Cottagecore décor celebrates simplicity, whimsy, and nostalgia. However, it also centers on a sustainable, frugal lifestyle that emphasizes using objects with intention and purpose.
Keeping those objectives in mind, cottagecore interiors are generally loaded with useful baskets and wood boxes, lots of greenery from plants to botanical prints, layered rugs for warmth and comfort, playful flowery wallpapers, and rustic artifacts brought inside from the countryside.
Cottage-style hutches, antique bureaus, and vintage desks are all examples of furniture. Cottagecore exteriors frequently feature a tiny, informal cottage garden with flowers and vegetables.
Cottagecore Decorating Tips
- Embrace rustic furnishings and accessories.
- Use natural materials like as wood and stone, as well as textiles like linen and wool.
- Vintage tea cups, lace doilies, and embroidery can all help you rediscover granny chic.
- Use earthy, warm, and neutral tones in everything from textiles to paint hues.
- To reduce waste, look for used furniture and décor at yard sales.
- Display family heirlooms.
- Include natural elements like fresh or dried flowers, plants, or nature-inspired décor.
- Install a chicken coop in your backyard.
- Make frequent use of your fireplace, or if you don’t have one, create an attractive focal point (or mimic fireplace) with a floating shelf mantel adorned with candles and pine cones in the winter and dried flowers in the summer.
FAQ
Is cottagecore still popular?
Many aspects of cottagecore will remain popular, such as vintage decor and decorating with comfortable accents.
What characterizes the dark cottagecore aesthetic?
Dark cottagecore, often known as goth cottagecore, embodies the same values as cottagecore. The difference is that dark cottagecore uses darker, richer hues and more macabre furnishings for a moodier look.
What is the antithesis of cottagecore design?
Sleek, contemporary interiors with clean lines and minimalist decor and design are the antithesis of the cottagecore concept.