Are you drawn to warm, rustic, inviting spaces that encourage you to put your feet up, sip a mug of coffee, and have a meaningful conversation with a close friend?
If you love farmhouse style, you know that it isn’t just about an aesthetic—it’s about a lifestyle. The point of farmhouse style is to create something that feels welcoming and homey while staying simple and uncluttered, focusing on what matters most.
But being drawn to a style and knowing how to replicate it in your home are two different things! You don’t want to blindly copy what’s popular. Instead, you want to use the style in a thoughtful way that suits your personal style.
At Cherie Kay, we care about helping families create inviting spaces where they feel a sense of belonging. If you are drawn to the farmhouse style but don’t know how to begin decorating your walls, we’re here to help!
Today, we’ll explore 7 farmhouse wall decor ideas and how you can incorporate them into your home in a beautiful and personally meaningful way.
Overview of Farmhouse Style
Farmhouse style is a cozy, welcoming design aesthetic that draws inspiration from the simplicity and charm of rural living. It often features natural materials like wood and stone, neutral color palettes, and a mix of vintage and practical décor. Farmhouse style usually features white walls accented by exposed beams, wide-plank floors, shiplap walls, and apron-front sinks, for an open and clean yet lived-in and comfortable space.
Farmhouse style leans into the wear and tear of time and nature and finds beauty in practical industrial features like barn doors and galvanized steel.
In a farmhouse home, timeworn pieces, such as weathered furniture and chippy paint finishes, are highlighted rather than hidden.
Other hallmark details of farmhouse style include open shelving, woven baskets, vintage signs, and soft, layered textiles like linen or cotton. Reclaimed wood furniture, oversized light fixtures, and large farmhouse tables are common centerpieces. Whether you're going for a more rustic or updated look, the key to farmhouse style is mixing textures, embracing imperfections, and creating a space that feels inviting and personal.
The Importance of Meaningful Decor
Farmhouse style, particularly the modern farmhouse look popularized by Joanna Gaines, has become the most popular design style in the USA. But because of its enormous popularity, homes decorated in farmhouse style can start to feel mundane and generic, like something you’ve seen 1000 times before. Which is ironic, because the original idea behind farmhouse style was to lean into and appreciate imperfect items, like a weather-beaten solid wood dining room table.
If you’re drawn to the style, the way to make it look fresh and interesting instead of like a generic stock image is to populate it with items you’ve carefully chosen, not because it’s what everyone else is buying, but because it speaks to you personally.
That way, you can achieve the farmhouse look while retaining a space that feels like you.
But where do you begin?
7 Farmhouse Wall Decor Ideas for Purposeful Beauty
Let’s look at some common farmhouse wall decor ideas and explore how you can use them to showcase the style meaningfully.
1. Botanical Floral Art
Farmhouse style popularized the use of vintage botanical prints as wall art. These floral designs are evocative in their simplistic beauty.
You can take the botanical print trend and make it personal and meaningful by:
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Choosing florals that you have some personal connection to, such as the flowers that were in your grandmother’s garden or your wedding bouquet
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Making your own floral art using dried or pressed flowers from special occasions
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Branching off the trend to decorating with floral paintings in soft colors, particularly pieces you find yourself inexplicably drawn to
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Getting a personalized canvas flag sign with a name surrounded by botanical florals
2. Word Art
Before farmhouse style became popular, “word art” was not a common phrase in people’s vocabulary, but it has since become a staple art form in people’s homes.
Don’t worry—there are many ways to use word art in creative, meaningful ways! Ditch the “live, laugh, love” and instead:
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Choose quotes and sayings that resonate in specific, meaningful ways
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Commission custom designs that quote something that’s extremely important to you, such as a line of a favorite book or an evocative phrase from your custom wedding vows
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Decorate with Scriptures that have been specifically inspirational to you, and important in your Spiritual journey
(If you want more ideas for Scripture wall art, read our blog post about 10 Christian Wall & Art Décor Ideas with Spiritual Significance.)
3. Vintage Tools
One of the unique design trends of farmhouse style is to decorate with vintage tools. The more weathered the wood or chipped the paint, the better! You might see a pitchfork mounted to the wall or a milk pail used as a magazine rack.
This decor style works with the ethos of farmhouse style because it honors hard work and rural heritage. But to make it truly meaningful and unique, use items that had a real use in your family history. Instead of shopping at an antique store for something with the right aesthetic, ask your uncles if they have any old tools hanging around the barn that they no longer use.
The best decor tells a story, so if you’re using family pieces, ask your relatives where the piece came from!
If this was the very hoe your grandma used to kill black snakes in the garden, that will be a fantastic story to tell guests.
4. Landscape Art
Since farmhouse style is all about celebrating rural living, the type of art prints you choose plays a big part in that. Farmhouse style is all about appreciating the beauty of calm, natural settings. Here are some examples of the types of pictures you may want in your home:
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Mountains
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Trees
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Fields
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Cottages
Overall, it should evoke a cozy, comforting feel, without loud colors or jarring imagery. Muted blues and greens are fantastic! Take the time to contemplate the art, and choose pieces that make you feel how you want your home to feel, or remind you of a real location you love.
5. Repurposed Windows
Farmhouse style seeks to have an open, welcoming, uncluttered feel while appreciating the natural distressing that happens to high-quality items over time.
One great way to use these feelings in your home is to decorate with old windows.
Like our previous point about decorating with farm tools, repurposed windows are extra meaningful if they come from the family or someone you know, making the piece a conversation starter. If anyone in your family is remodeling their home or tearing down an old building, ask them what they plan to do with the windows! Often, the beautiful old windows need to be replaced with a more energy-efficient option, but you can preserve history by using them as decor.
6. Animal Art
To pay tribute to rural life and simplicity, a common decor idea for farmhouse style is to have soft-toned paintings or sketches of cows, chickens, or horses.
When used sparingly and interspersed with other meaningful decor, farm animal art can add charm to any home.
But instead of slapping cow pictures everywhere in an attempt to give your home a farmhouse feel, go a little deeper by carefully selecting art with animals that are genuinely meaningful to you.
If you grew up with chickens and pigs, you might find it delightful to decorate your walls with them. But you can get a look that’s just as meaningful, and just as “farmhouse,” with beautiful depictions of birds, rabbits, butterflies, or any creature you’re drawn to. And it will hold up over time, long after the trend for cows on your dish towels has passed.
7. Dried florals and plants
Finally, farmhouse style features bouquets and wreaths made of dried flowers and plants such as cotton, wheat, pampas grass, or twigs.
This dried flora adds charm to your home and shows a love of nature. But how much more meaningful is it to feature things you grew yourself instead of generic things you bought in the store?
Of course, if you’re drawn to the look of popular dried plants, by all means, decorate with them! But also experiment with drying local plants and flowers, and adding them to the bouquets and wreaths.
Also, you can dry the flowers from special occasions such as weddings, and remember the event whenever you look at your decor!
Overall, no matter what you choose to put on your walls, be thoughtful about it. Think about the overall feel of your home, and incorporate as much as you can that has personal meaning to you. Of course, you probably won’t have the time to make all the pieces yourself—but remember, you can still go for meaningful over generic pieces by buying handcrafted items from local artisans!
Where to Buy Farmhouse Style Decor
We hope this blog inspired you to get creative with your farmhouse decor and be thoughtful with what you use to adorn your walls so your home truly feels like you.
At Cherie Kay, we create handcrafted wall decor to help you create a space you love, including gallery art, word art, and personalized pieces.
We’d be honored if you would take some time to browse our art, looking for unique pieces that speak to you. We aim to help you find something you will love to look at every day, that showcases your story and blesses everyone who visits your home.
