How to Get the Cabincore Look in Your Home
With vintage style, après-ski chic and rich, cozy materials, on-trend cabincore is the perfect way to celebrate natural splendor and creature comforts all at once. HGTV’s design team reveals how to make any space feel like a woodsy retreat.
Need a Vacation? Retreat Into Cabincore
Imagine an evergreen-scented mountain breeze wafting through a rustic cottage-style space, cozied up with nature-inspired apres-ski decor and a layer of Scandinavian hygge, and you’ve got cabincore. This into-the-woods aesthetic is a natural extension of the design world’s ongoing fondness for organic materials and interiors that feel both intimate and connected to the outdoors. Its old-school motifs offer symbolic relief from the 21st century’s technological distractions. Ready for your own breath of fresh air, courtesy of cabincore? We’ll show you how to bring it into your home.
Celebrate the National Parks
Re-create the golden age of road tripping and rugged family vacations by keeping your eyes peeled for antique shop and flea market finds that reference wild destinations. Gallery walls with images of those places are lovely, but mementos, like the ones in this Montana ski-retreat bedroom, can be even more atmospheric.
Brings Exterior Treatments Inside
This bedroom owes its rugged feel to the boards bringing texture to the walls. More dimensional than shiplap and less literal than stained wood paneling, these dark green surfaces evoke forest feels. Speaking of greens, cabincore is all about foliage-inspired hues; anchor your palette with a tone like this one and you’re halfway up the mountain.
Lean Into Birdwatching and Nature Guides
Designer Julija Stoliarova infused this hotel lounge in the Catskills with an indelible sense of place by framing and displaying classic illustrations of local fungi and fauna. She then doubled down on her theme with a statuette of a duck in flight, wild greenery clipped from the meadow just outside and a pair of binoculars for the coffee table.
Bold Plaid + Sheepskin
Cultivating coziness the cabincore way means combining geometric and textural throws. For instance, the black-and-white buffalo check throw, seen at the foot of this bed, with ultra-textural layers, like the sheepskin. Supplemental bedding items are ideal for the cabincore-curious, since they’re easily added and stripped away.
Swiss Army Blankets Complement Cabincore
The silvery-gray greens we referenced a little while ago and the buffalo check we just mentioned both pair beautifully with graphic Swiss crosses, as seen here in an old-school blanket repurposed as a pillow. If you fancy cabincore that tips over just a bit into midcentury modern style, textiles like these — available both as vintage items and in contemporary versions inspired by the original gear — should top your shopping list.
Cast Iron in the Kitchen
Their non-stick surfaces improve foods’ flavor, they get better as they age and they look excellent displayed on a counter-to-ceiling pegboard — is there anything cast-iron pans can’t do? Give your kitchen a hint of rustic cabincore seasoning by creating a chic heirloom arrangement.
Delightful Fireplaces
Cabincore would not be complete without a fireplace to cozy up next to while enjoying the picturesque forest views. Whether your fireplace is wood-burning, gas or electric, the warm ambiance it evokes is still the same.
Literature is Imperative
Literature in a cabincore space is essential. Built-ins and bookcases are lovely if you happen to have them, but if you’ve got a makeshift library stacked in a hutch or against the wall, you’re right on trend as well. Elevate the look by arranging volumes by color, as in this tawny guest suite.
Reclaimed Wood + Rugged Fixtures
Textural barn wood creates organic patterns and highlights the walls’ dramatic angles in this rustic lake cabin. Menswear-inspired plaids, a faux fur throw and a cowhide offer a rustic and cozy look to this space. The sitting area’s pendant lacks glass panels, but its silhouette mimics installations you might expect to see outside. Cabincore avoids delicate chandeliers but instead uses pieces with strong lines, like these.
Layer Neutral Tones
Pale wood armchairs and floorboards, untanned leather, white faux sheepskin and a nubbly sisal ottoman contribute understated organic hues to this cabin’s sophisticated, Scandinavian mezzanine. This is the futuristic, minimalistic side of cabincore.
Incorporate Antlers and Well-Weathered Leather
Make the most of natural forms by topping your cabincore space with a many-pronged antler chandelier and reaching for seating that’s acquired some patina. In this sitting area, petrified-wood occasional tables and shapely brass figures in the built-ins counterbalance more masculine elements with a bit of glamour and polish.
Work With Local Materials and Natural Stone
When designer Leanne Ford wanted to restore some of the soul to her century-old home (which spent the first decades of its life as a hunting cabin), she scoured her property for stones to re-create the look of the building’s original stone fireplace. That new-but-old structure brought so much summer-camp character to the space that futuristic touches like her mirrored coffee table and midcentury arc lamp snuck in without compromising her rustic vibe.
Anchor With Woodsy Wallpaper
Forest-inspired patterns like Cole & Son’s iconic Woods & Pears can turn a powder room into a cabincore grove. Moody, photorealistic mural paper can pinch-hit for natural vistas in spaces that lack views.
Reconsider Wood Paneling
If you’re prepared to make a big-ticket commitment to cabincore, consider how fresh the warm, wraparound wood feels in this restored Texas cabin. The key to keeping this bold move from overwhelming the space? Counterbalancing the rustic walls, ceiling and trim with contemporary white tabletop items, a super-sleek bench and a Roman shade in crisp linen.
Cozy Up With Flannel
Touchable flannel delivers a cabincore-inspired punch of character in this tailored bedroom, where the window treatment combines graphic plaid curtains with natural shades. Like throw blankets and sheets, rustic fabric accessories are a versatile, seasonal way to experiment with a new aesthetic.
Layered Botanicals Bring Cabincore to Life
This space’s sophisticated formula for cabincore (a dried bouquet perched atop a rustic wood-and-cane dresser + a potted Norfolk pine and a Boston fern + wall-mounted skis) is both classic and contemporary. Evoke this feel in your rooms with a more-is-more approach. Start with a small floral arrangement, add a few hardy container plants or just-cut greenery, and keep going until your interior feels as invigorating as a walk outside.
Live-Edge Wood Lends Character
Like coastal and Scandinavian design, cabincore celebrates the materiality of objects, like this coffee table, a single plank of wood with lacquered edges that preserve the texture of its original exterior. We can’t all live in hand-hewn cabins, but living-room centerpieces put heirloom-worthy rustic character in everyone’s reach.
Cabincore Is All Things Pendleton
With a history of manufacturing trade blankets since 1909, Oregon’s Pendleton Woolen Mill produces instantly recognizable textiles that are synonymous with the Pacific Northwest and cabincore. Start with a graphic sham or throw and work your way up to, say, a blanket-wrapped faux moose head for your mantel.
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