These are the country kitchens we most covet – plus, discover how to get the look.
My Mulberry House
Leah Lane’s gorgeous Georgian house in Surrey – formerly a home farm of Farnham Castle – is a dream. Home to Leah, her husband Rupert, their two children and a menagerie of animals, including cats, hens, ducks, it is cosy, lived-in and thoroughly beautiful (her children’s painted attic beds are sigh-inducing). We especially love the kitchen, where there is usually an avian friend trotting around and a small child sitting in the Belfast sink. A rural idyll that looks like fun to live in and not precious. Follow.
Mrs Trufflepig
Genevieve Harris – aka Mrs Trufflepig – bought her much-followed house in Rye, East Sussex in 2016. Back then it was a dilapidated wreck. Now it is glorious family home, replete not only with children but a coterie of pets, all of whom roam free amid the rural romance Mrs T presides so beautifully over. Hers is the kind of kitchen that you can bet is always permeated with the aroma of chickens roasting or cakes baking. Follow.
Ridge And Furrow
Elle Kemp has form when it comes to breathing life and style into rural idylls. She and her husband cut their teeth on a self-built pigsty in the Cotswolds and now they’ve turned their unerring eye to slowly unearthing the history of a farmhouse in Herefordshire. Elle’s use of colour is always unexpected and interesting; she’s not afraid to embrace the gloom but always cuts through it with a punch of strong colour (see her brown kitchen working beautifully with the vivid blue cooker). Squint only very slightly and it could have wandered straight out of a Vermeer painting. Follow.
Berdoulat Interior Design
Berdoulat Interior Design’s Instagram account is wall-to-wall beauty and inspiration. We especially love this kitchen, which they designed for their clients Glen and Keith. The view from the pantry makes us sigh happily and jot down all the bits we might steal for our own, somewhat inferior, kitchen scenes. Do scroll the whole account – we could happily do so for days. Follow.
Beata Heuman
This kitchen may be in Notting Hill and thus far from the country. But the genius of Beata Heuman is that she delivers the homely spirit of a rural kitchen – complete with lovely striped skirting – while never even flirting with the twee, proving that you can channel the spirit of wherever you want to be, wherever you are. Follow.
Salvesen Graham
Luxury to end all luxuries: for those with the space, turning an auxiliary room into a utility/pantry is the dream. This sunshine-hued example by Salvesen Graham is a knock-out. And, for smaller spaces, this look would work beautifully as the kitchen itself too. It’s all in the scalloped shelving and the pretty skirt details. Bonus points for painting a handy stepladder in a matchy-matchy colour. Follow.
Tolstoy Cottage
When Alexandra Tolstoy isn’t leading horseback tours around Kyrgyzstan, she is frequently to be found in her Oxfordshire cottage which, to our minds, represents the bucolic ideal. The house has good bones – note the lovely low-slung beams – but we love the marriage of the rustic utilitarian with the softly welcoming and homely. Note the lovely collection of baskets and the garden-plucked flowers atop the perfect farmhouse table. And the good news is, you can rent this cottage and thus claim a slice of the rural reverie – for a spell at least. Follow.
Laura Stephens
We often feel a tussle between our dual love of dark and cosy spaces and our equal admiration for the light and fresh. Here, in a Cotswolds cottage, designer Laura Stephens offers up a masterclass in house the two can co-exist in beautiful harmony. Panelled walls, lovely flagstones and that lovely, inviting deep red: we love it. Follow.
By Nancy Alsop
August 2023
