| Deer Skye Quilt and Home Design

Shabby means timeworn and aged. Chic means stylish, cozy, and inviting. To achieve this look in your home, the following helpful ideas will guide you in creating your Shabby Chic design space.

Be mindful of soft muted colors and neutrals especially always fit this style. Repurpose items that you find at yard sales and flea markets. Paint wooden furniture white or muted pastel colors and distress it for an aged chippy look. Ruffles on curtains, pillows, bedding, etc… add a soft look to your shabby design. Corbels, and metal even rusty brackets make beautiful supports for shelves in your decor. Slipcovers lend themselves to easy carefree shabby chic design. Hang florals on walls, doors, and use florals on tables, dressers, in baskets, anywhere you want to spiff up an area and tie it into your shabby chic vibe. Drop cloth decor can be used to make your shabby chic affordable. Burlap gives a little more rustic vibe to the vintage design you are trying to create. Layered bedding with lots of pillows, tea stained fabric accessories, cute fabric roses, and old glass windows with wreaths hanging on them. Use aged second hand store frames to decorate also add glass door knobs and glass drawer pulls to your furniture and Shabby Chic decor elements. Add a chandelier to your entryway or other room in your home.

Use A Muted Color Or Neutral Paint Palette

To create a backdrop of Shabby Chic decor, you can start with pastel colored walls, white is always the go to for Shabby Chic. You can also use soft grays, soft browns, tans all fit in that neutral category. Mint green, pink, and white are the classic shabby palatte. White is my fav when it comes to Shabby Chic decor. White gives such a serene and calming vibe to a room decorated in Shabby Chic.

Thrifting Yard Sales And Flea Markets To Decorate

Since Shabby Chic is all about vintage decor, there are some great finds at yard sales and flea markets. I’ll go one further, your local thrift store has great decor items that are budget friendly if you take your time to look through the store carefully. Some of my best decor finds that I have repurposed into beautiful decor I found so unexpectedly as I scoured the shelves slowly and carefully at my local thrift store.

Repurposing is an art. Not very difficult but it is an art. When you see an item you like and can picture how you would update it, that is talent. Don’t be afraid to try this though! There are a lot of things you can make quite cheaply if you use your creativity. Antique frames, candlesticks, old pictures, lamps you name it and an old kitchen pan can be recreated by painting them white, distressed and feet added to the bottom to become a lovely riser/tray for your kitchen sink or bathroom.

Distressed Wooden Furniture

Take any piece of furniture and paint it white. Distress the edges and other parts according to your taste. There you a have a Shabby Chic look. If you prefer, paint it a light pastel color and distress it. You can distress it with sandpaper or while the paint is wet, wipe the areas off that you want to distress with a baby wipe. This is part of the chippy antique look. It is a quaint and charming look. If you prefer, don’t distress it at all and just paint your piece with white, another neutral color, or pastel. It still works as Shabby Chic.

Ruffles Are The Romantic Look Of Shabby Chic

Shabby Chic design gives a romantic vibe. It is soft, graceful, and very beautiful! Ruffled curtains, ruffled pillows, ruffled tablecloths, ruffled bedding, and chair covers, etc…are elements of this style. You can incorporate ruffles in your decor as you like. Antique looking lace is another beautiful addition to decorating in the shabby chic way. You can buy it at craft stores like Hobby Lobby or if you are lucky enough to find some at a thrift or second hand store grab it and buy it fast! Add lace to the ruffles on your decor items.

Using Decorative Brackets In Your Decor

Shelves are a popular way to add some Shabby Chic design by displaying books and a variety Shabby Chic decor. Use a couple of metal even rusty decorative brackets attached to the wall. Then set a white painted distressed wood on the brackets long enough to cover the full length of the brackets. (If you prefer, you can leave your wood unpainted or you can stain the wood.) I have some metal decorative brackets that will work great for this. I love wooden brackets also called corbels. They are look carved and have an old vintage look to them. They would work the same for a beautiful Shabby Chic shelf.

Shabby Slipcovers

The thing about Shabby Chic is it has such a natural presence. Wrinkles and the rumples look are very much in, in this style. It is both stylish and comfortable. A don’t care attitude look to the soft lines of canvas or drop cloth slipcovers make a room cozy and inviting. Add to that checkered, and floral ruffled pillows. Carry slipcovers over into your dining room on the chairs. This makes cleaning easier too because you can just throw your slipcovers into the wash or take them to the dry cleaners when they need a quick pick me up. Slipcovers can give your furniture the soft look of Shabby Chic. You can either buy slipcovers or DIY your own.

Florals, Florals, And More Florals

Faux and real florals throughout your home as well as floral fabrics sprinkled in rooms of your home are part of the Shabby Chic look. They give your home a very distinctive look. Who doesn’t love fresh flowers on the table or sitting in the entryway. Garden roses especially give off this vibe. There is no comparison between garden roses like David Austin which I use to grow up my walk way before we moved into the home we are in now and everyday normal variety of roses.

From time to time I get to do wedding flowers which I love doing! I make sure I spoil the bride with fresh garden roses in her bouquet because they are so stinkin’ romantic and beautiful! I love them. When I use faux roses in my decor, they have to have a real look to them or it isn’t worth using them. That is where I draw the line for Shabby Chic florals as well. You can arrange florals to hang on the wall, in wreaths, on a stack of books tied with a ribbon, glue to a frame of a picture hanging on the wall put them wherever they make sense to you.

Pick out some beautiful floral fabric with large roses on it and make pillows or a throw for your bed out of it. Floral cushions or slipcovers for your dining room chairs is a beautiful way to add Shabby Chic decor. Hang some small faux floral bouquets to the back of your chairs or chairs at your kitchen island for added charm.

Baskets add Shabby Chic charm too. Fill them with linens, books, and flowers for a lovely display by your fireplace, in your bedroom on the bed, or on the edge of a nightstand or desk.

Drop Cloth Decor

Drop cloth can be used in so many ways in your Shabby Chic decor and is budget friendly. Take a drop cloth and hot glue or sew a ruffle on it for drapes. Hang them with rings with clips (you can find them at Walmart in the drapery department), if you like no sew and put them on a curtain hanger. Quick, easy, and budget friendly.

Cut two pieces of drop cloth in the shape you want. Then sew or hot glue 2 pieces together without turning inside out for a pillow. Stencil a design or hot glue pom pom trim, lace or ribbon to your pillow. Make rosettes for pillows and other Shabby Chic decor.

You can use drop cloth to make a wreath you can hang to add to your Shabby Chic decor. Purchase a wire frame wreath. Cut several 5″ or longer pieces and then tie them all around the 2 layers of your wreath frame. Add ribbon and decor for a frilly looking wreath.

Burlap In Your Design

While burlap is rustic and farmhouse style, you can implement it into Shabby Chic decor. Add some lace to it, some handmade ribbon, twine, or drop cloth roses and you have Shabby Chic at its finest. Use burlap on your table for a table runner, for your pillows, or your entryway. You can make a fun floral to hang in your home out of a piece of wood and burlap.

Take a piece of plywood about 12″ x 18″. Paint your wood with white paint and distress it to give it an aged look. Cut a rectangle of burlap for a fabric vase. The Graphic Fairy has some cute free graphics that you can download. I mod podged one to my burlap.

Let your mod podge dry and then hot glue back the two side edges of your burlap and the bottom edge of your piece of burlap. Glue wide antique looking lace to the top edge of your burlap. Attach your burlap to your wood. Glue the top just at each edge. Don’t glue across it.

Make some cute rosettes from twine and drop cloth to glue on the top of your burlap bag for added “wow” factor. Put doll stuffing in the bottom of your diy gunny sack bag. Add some strips of fabric, lace, and tie it all in a knot then glue to the left edge at the top of your bag.

Fill your bag with autumn leaves or faux flowers, greenery, whatever you want to fill it with. Then you can change it out during the seasons. There you go! Shabby Chic burlap lace decor in a jif! If you have all of your supplies it should only take a couple of hours or less.

Bedding and Home Accessories

Shabby Chic design is all about the home decor and accessories that you put in a room that gives your space a Shabby Chic feel. Take your bedding for instance. Layered bedding not only gives your bed a feeling of comfort, warmth, and coziness, it is pleasing to the eye and you can do this with Shabby Chic elements. You can make your bed as ruffled and pillow filled as you like. Or you can have fewer pillows and just a textured throw to get the Shabby Chic look you are going for. Floral bedding is also a sign of Shabby Chic.

Here are some Shabby Chic tips:

Start by putting a ruffled bedskirt on first if you like this look. Just by putting a ruffled bedskirt on your bed elevates the look of your bed and room. You can add almost any comforter or duvet cover on top of your bed that will look Shabby Chic if you have a ruffled bedskirt on your bed.
Then follow with sheets on your bed. There are ruffled bed sheets if you want a softer feminine look. You don’t have to use ruffles but they fit so well in the Shabby Chic design.
Top with a lightweight blanket.
Fold your comforter in half and lay it over the end of the bed.
You can top the comforter with another lightweight blanket that is folded so you can see the edges of the comforter. Lay it across the top of the folded comforter.
Take a throw and lay it across the bed on the diagonal.
Add Euro Pillows with shams that have ruffles or lace on them. Place them in front of your standard pillows. Then add some smaller ruffled pillows and other decorative pillows in front of your euro pillows.

You can stick to a muted color palette or use neutrals. It’s okay to add floral, checkered, or toile type patterns in your sheets. You can mix and match patterns that you like. Add a wreath above the bed. Old windows make a beautiful decor piece. Set it on a dresser or hang it on a wall and hang a Shabby Chic wreath (the dropcloth wreath tutorial I shared. Or hang a greenery wreath on the window.

Tea stained fabric is easy to make. Just take some hot water and stick a tea bag in it. Let it cool. Take a flour sack and dip it into the tea mixture until it is as stained as you want. Use this fabric for pillows for ribbon strips to attach to wreaths or make fabric rosettes out of.

Old Picture Frames And Glass Cabinet Hardware

Second hand frames found at garage sales and thrift stores can be used in so many ways to decorate your walls or set on dressers against a wall. Paint them white or gold and do a little distressing. Add some french sayings or quotes and frame them. You don’t even have to have glass in your frames. You can also take the glass out of your frame. Cover it with fabric and stencil a design or saying. Then put the glass back inside the frame. Just simply hang an assortment of old fancy frames on a wall for decor. No one said Shabby Chic had to be difficult to do!

Glass drawer knobs can top all kinds of decor along with its original job of cabinetry hardware on your furniture. They add a nice Shabby flair that looks so chic!

Chandelier Beauty

Hang a chandelier to add to your Shabby Chic decor. If you don’t have a chandelier and you want to add one to your space, you might find one at a flea market or thrift store. Paint it. fix it up and then hang it over a table in a corner or somewhere where it will elevate your space. It doesn’t even have to work. If you chose to replace a light fixture, put in the right size and the right Chandelier size for you.

How Do You Do Shabby Chic?