Country French Bedroom Ideas

Design the country French bedroom of your dreams:  7 authentic French country bedroom ideas you could copy on a budget.

The country French bedroom examples on this page are all from two boutique B&Bs in the South of France, not far from Avignon:

• Les Sardines aux Yeux Bleus  (The Blue-Eyed Sardines) in Gattigues, and

• La Maison  in Blauzac (this one's the work of interior designer, Richard Goullet).

Both have been featured  (a lot!)  in interior design magazines.

Their centuries-old French bedrooms are decorated in a mix of traditional provençal  style, with shabby/elegant or exotic antiques as well as some contemporary elements.

Country French Bedroom #1:
Fabric Headboard

The head"board" in this French provincial bedroom is a length of antique fabric, edged with velvet and mounted on a batten to make it hang straight.

The fabric picks up the bottom wall color (just like the picture mat on the side table does - see the photo above).

The little mirror (in a battered frame) is like a piece of jewelry that adds sparkle to the display and breaks up the rectangular, dark color fields.

PROS:

• This idea can transform any old mattress on a bedframe into a French style bedroom experience.
• It will give your country French bedroom a truly unique accent.

CONS:

• Antique fabrics can be quite fragile - they need good backing & careful handling
• Not conducive to breakfasts in bed: may be too delicate to lean against

OTHER IDEAS:

• Instead of antique fabric, use
• a length of toile de jouy  and turn it into a long, flat cushion (neutral fabric backing). Hang from a horizontal curtain rod or pole, close to the wall. Nice for sitting up in bed.
• Instead of toile, use velvet. Very French.
• Instead of the mirror, use
• a row (or small cluster) of pictures
• a fun ornament. Anything. (Preferably gilded).
• a small, flat slab of wood with uneven sides, covered in gold leaf. Very French indeed.

Country French Bedroom #2:
Heavy Linen & Ornament

Create a French provincial bedroom in a symphony of white  (with walls, flooring and furniture in color - click here for examples of French country color schemes).

No headboard necessary. All you need is ...

1.  Generous curtains - forming a 'puddle' on the floor to show off painterly folds and creases.

2.  Different whites - layer milky whites, light creams and some ivory.  Avoid bleached, bluish whites; they will spoil your color scheme.

3.  Different textures - quilted, knitted, crinkled, embroidered.

4.  Some ornament on (or near) the bedding - for example:

• a white embroidered monogram
• a red, cross-stitched monogram
• a tiny snippet of antique embroidery, edged & stitched onto the coversheet
• a piece of white-on-white embroidery, framed and hung on the wall above the bed

PROS:

• Will work in almost any type of room, newly built or 400-year-old country French farmhouse with exposed stone walls
• The color white is fresh and timeless
• Accessorizing possibilities are unlimited!

CONS:

• This look needs substantial, heavy fabrics - flimsy stuff won't work, even if you starch it. And linen (particularly antique  linen) ain't cheap.
• If you want the room to be instantly recognizable  as a country French bedroom, you may want to add a few typical "French"-looking accessories (see below).

OTHER IDEAS:

• If you can't get good linen at a decent price, mix
• heavy Egyptian cotton,
• hemp fabrics,
• burlap/hessian, and
• real nettle (if you can find some).
• For rustic flooring (in the absense of terracotta tiling), try
  • wide floorboards, or
  • sisal carpet, or
  • straw matting, or
  • grosgrain wool carpet
• Subtly "antique" a new-looking room by faux-finishing the walls:
• wash or wipe a slightly lighter paint color over the first coat, or
• play with subtle shifts in color by mixing a few drops of a related hue into your paint for the second coat.
• Apply the paint unevenly: wipe, scrub & scratch.
• Some ideas for country French bedroom accessories:
• Iconic images from the South of France:
• a boulevard in Aix-en-Provence,
• olive trees,
• views from a Provençal hilltop village,
• the Pont du Gard,
• the Grand Canyon du Verdon,
• Roman Arles,
• Lavender fields at Sénanque Abbey,
• ochre cliffs in Roussillon.
• French words in frames - street names, shop signs, etc.
• French novels with great cover art, displayed in box frames

Country French Bedrooms #3 & #4:
"Headboard" Of Paint

Paint a golden "headboard" like this one if you want an instant 'wow' factor for your country French bedroom.

This example was painted over a ground of black and red paint, and different metal paint colors were used.

PROS:

• Using gold in interiors is a "French" thing to do.
• Looks great, even with rustic French country bedding.
• Good for impressing folks!

CONS:

• If you have accessories and/or light fixtures in silver colors (e.g. nickel plated, or brushed aluminium), the gold wall color won't look right.
  (Experiment with silver colors rather than using gold.)

OTHER IDEAS:

• Replace gold with another color, to match other elements in the room:
• carpet/rug(s)
• bedding
• accessories (e.g. picture mats or frames)
• Try different "bedhead" shapes: narrow and tall, oval, or a low long rectangle

The following picture shows a more painterly approach to the French country (fake) bedhead, with stylized white lilies (akin to the fleur-de-lys symbol):

More country French bedroom ideas from this room:

• terracotta floor tiles mounted on the wall as rustic bedside 'tables',
• a golden line around the room in lieu of a chair rail,
• 'statement' floor lamps on either side of the bed, rather than small bedside light fixtures.

Country French Bedroom #5:
Feature Fabric & Asymmetry

If you have a piece of beautiful fabric, consider 'framing' it with a solid-color, simpler textile to turn it into a French country bedspread.

The calico in the photo above is block-printed with a Mughal flower design from India. This may not look much like a 'French provincial' bedroom compared to what we're used to, but Indian-style prints actually arrived in Southern France early in the 17th century; they inspired the colorful provençal prints as well as, later in the mid-18th century, Toile de Jouy.

PROS:

• This idea looks great with any  lovely fabric, even a bedspread with patchwork 'intarsia' would work well. Or toile,  of course.

CONS:

• None.

OTHER IDEAS:

• You can give elegant fabrics a "French country" feel by displaying them against a rustic background fabric; gray linen (as in this picture), burlap, or cotton duck are good candidates.
• For a color punch, try silk velvet.
• Try creating asymmetric bedside displays like the ones above, with
• identical lighting and tables
• different-sized pictures, framed in the same colors & materials
• different artefacts clustered on each table.

Country French Bedroom #6:
Oversized Elements

This is the least recognizably French country bedroom of the collection - but it's in France, and very much in the country ;-)  I'm including it here for two reasons: the fun bedhead and the tall bedside lamps.

The lamps are too tall for traditional bedside light fixtures, and too short to pass for floor lamps.  They look as if they'd been made for a giant's bed, and they add a dashing sense of 'larger-than-life' character to the room.

Also, here's another headboard painted onto the wall; this one integrates the tiled 'bedhead', which floats high above the mattress and pillows.

PROS:

• If you want a French provincial bedroom with attitude, you could do much worse than this.

CONS:

• Great design, but not everyone will love it.

OTHER IDEAS:

• You can integrate almost any element into a 'bedhead' wall space:
  1. Paint a fake bedhead on the wall.
  2. Display stuff inside this color field, e.g.
• a series of framed pictures or artefacts, or
• a few tiles, with or without a frame, or
• a small piece of decorative fabric, fixed to the wall, or
• a cluster of plates, silver trays, or decorative wooden boards (to name just a few examples).

Country French Bedroom #7:
Gold, And Lots Of It

I saved this bedroom until last, because ...
a) it's so unbelievably over the top, and b) it works.

How would you feel if you were surrounded by this amount of gold color in your home?  Would you feel rich?  Annoyed?  Would you enjoy it?

This room is actually quite spacious (the photo doesn't show this at all).  The gold color covers all  walls up to chair rail height. It looks beautiful against the serene sky blue that covers the upper part of the walls.

You can use gold for all types of country French bedroom decorating, from rustic to elegant.

If you're not ready to have large amounts of gold on your walls, here are a few ideas for using gold in a country French bedroom.

Firstly, you could use gold as an accent color for

• picture frames,
• a golden line here and there
     (as in bedroom #4),
• small gilded objects.

Or, if you feel more daring, try ...

• stencilling (as in the picture here: this is the ceiling  of the blue-golden room above.)
• painting fun details, like golden chair legs, a gold tabletop, or gold feet for an armoire
• using gold for larger areas, e.g. a 10in wide stripe around the room, directly beneath the ceiling (in lieu of crown mouldings - or paint a narrower, accent stripe underneath the crown mouldings).

Where To Buy Country French Bedroom Furniture

All of the above country French bedrooms can be created without any  French provincial bedroom furniture whatsoever.  On the other hand, you may want to add an armoire, or a chest of drawers, or a dressing table with a mirror, just to make your French country bedroom look more, um, French.

Here's a list of potential sources:

a) For reproduction pieces, try these:

• French country beds
• Canopy iron beds
• White metal beds
• Black metal beds
• White matelassé bedspreads

b) For antique country French bedroom furniture, or a mix of old and new elements, try

• Garage and yard sales,
• Flea markets,
• Estate sales,
• Antiques dealers, or
• Antiques auctions.

Alternatively, get lucky and find exactly what you're looking for on ebay!

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