Doors - Cozy and Charming European front doors - V5

5th installment of pictures of front doors with lots of character, taken all in Eifel, Germany. Most of them are currently being used as residential front doors, and a few are front doors to apartment buildings.

If you enjoy these and would like to see more, see my other posts on doors with character (links below.)

All pics by Sinan Yucel @siyu_adam.

For more pictures of charming European front doors see:

Doors - Historic and current European front doors
Doors - Historic and current European front doors - V2

Doors - Historic and current European front doors - V3
Doors - Cozy and charming European front doors - V4

Casual and chill living rooms

Creating cozy and comfortable living spaces go hand-in-hand with unpretentious, well-loved pieces of furniture, and low-maintenance natural materials that age well. 

Image sources: image 1, image 2, image 3, and image 4

Inexpensive beauty indoors and outdoors

You can achieve beautiful environments indoors and outdoors without a big budget by using pieces with character and charm. Natural materials, colors, and textures generally look good, and plants and foliage always add beauty. Be true to your taste. A place with a heart and soul is always pleasant and nothing can creates that warmth like pieces that are well-used, well-liked, and personally meaningful. Avoid status symbols. Because an environment that displays virtues; like resourcefulness, efficiency, creativity, honesty, and modesty is a cozy and an inspiring environment. A place that intends to display wealth and status cannot achieve the same.

^ It's not flawless craftsmanship, perfectly pruned plants, or luxury furniture that makes this area so cozy.

^ Inexpensive colored glass marbles and a little creativity and can turn a standard wooden fence to something lovely.

^ Sometimes it is not applying a fresh coat of paint that adds charm.

^ Lots of foliage can make any place beautiful and inviting.

^ A varied collection of unpretentious, simple, and honest items are more welcoming than matchy-matchy status symbols.

Sources: image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4,  image 5

Cozy, rustic, industrial...The eclectic mixed style of Hotel Emma

There are many benefits to having a mixture of styles; it is truer to life and more compatible with it, usually we end up with loved-pieces of various styles over our lives and they get to coexist in our homes. Such a mixed style is visually more interesting and more stimulating to the senses than a mono-style set up. It also allows you to more easily introduce new furniture or replace pieces without having to worry about them perfectly matching what's already there. When you make those mixed styles also consist of items that age well and gain patina and character from daily use, you get additional benefits like ease of use, livability, and a timeless look.

The Hotel Emma in San Antonio is a great example of these ideas being put to use. They achieved a beautiful timeless look that is sophisticated yet casual, elegant but cozy and comfortable all at once.

Photos by Casual Casa

Colorful window shutters of Mediterranean homes

Add some casual color to your life. Mediterranean coasts are some of the longest inhabited parts of our world and that collected wisdom taught them how to live a casual, easy-going, colorful life. Painting a whole house a wild color may be too much, but colorful shutters, window frames, and/or doors seem to be just the right amount of lively color.

^ These top two pics are from Alacati, Turkey.

Sources: images 1 & 2, image 3, image 4, image 5

Cozy, homey, and practical home

When unpretentious elements like natural colors and textures, things that age well, and can take wear and tear come together in a practical way, you get a comfortable, cozy and a very livable home.

Creating a similar exterior may not be an option in cities but the interior elements would make welcome touches in any setting.

^ That green door, the covered porches, the easy-going landscaping, with the gravel and flagstone path are all cool touches.

^ I love the saltillo tiles, the kilim rug, and the big practical benches in this mudroom.

^ That rooster rug is nice. I also love those fabric covers. You don't always need the structure and the strength of rigid doors. Sometimes you just need a dust blocker, and efficiency is a good thing. The fabric also adds a warmer/softer touch. I like the painted cabinets and the DIY-ish kitchen island, too.

Image source

Dine-in kitchen: Smart and efficient use of space

It is smart to use space efficiently. It is also more environment-friendly, demands less economically, and in this specific example; friendlier, and cosier. Dining and entertaining right in the kitchen makes sense. Gone are the days of separate dining areas for family vs guests. A kitchen/entertaining space like this is more intimate and homey and in today's world we could use more of that. (That steel beam table is a bit overkill but overall, this is a good-looking and a very practical set up.)

Image from bloodandchampagne.com

Cozy kitchens with character

A lot of kitchen updates go from kitchens with some unique character that should be appreciated, to uncreative versions of the current trend. The "updated" kitchen is often time-stamped and bound to be dated in a few years. Such an update is in most cases financially an unnecessary burden, physically wasteful -since a lot of perfectly good things end up getting ripped out and replaced because they're not the newest style. Emotionally, it is only a band-aid because the way to appreciate your kitchen (clothes, furniture, etc.) is to make a mental switch, not a physical one. There will come new trends and if your satisfaction only comes from having the current style, your satisfaction is bound to fade, and you will soon find yourself coveting newer styles.

And if your place deteriorated beyond repair and it makes more sense to renovate, it is best to go after a unique and timeless set-up so you can appreciate it for a lot longer.

Images from thekitchn.com -Notice the mismatched dining chairs! 

Rustic & relaxed

Images from hammer-2-anvil.tumblr.com

Satisfaction & happiness

It is the modest, the natural, the cozy and the comfortable that soothe our souls and make us happy -not the fancy, the luxurious, and the pretentious.  The former brings us together and the latter feeds the status quo and puts barriers between us.

That's a great simple coffee table in the bottom picture!

Images from brendan-i-am.tumblr.com

Casual and comfortable outdoor areas

Outdoor areas should be comfortable, casual, and cozy. Especially outside, perfection is not a good look. Aged, imperfect, cared for but not anally maintained spaces are the best.

Top image from gypsypurplehome.tumblr.com , bottom image from nicety.livejournal.com

Warm & easy-going decor on video

This video is for a vacation rental in Australia. It has a lot of beautiful shots with cozy, liveable interiors. Make sure you watch it in full screen.


Trelawney Farm from Racket on Vimeo.

Cozy & easy-going place

This place is really cool and set up with a lot of simple yet cozy details -and if you can believe it, the place is only 600sq ft! Living in a place like this would be like always being on vacation -not a bad thing at all. This is such an inspiration to me, reminding me that one can create a beautiful life with so much less and that money is better spent on experiences and not on stuff anyway. Go Brooke & Ian Hanson! (Hanson's are the owners and creators of this place.)

All images from CountryLiving.com but I saw them first on BirchAndBird.com

Cozy porch by the water

Great relaxing place, no? A simple, cozy, and unpretentious life is always charming. And when you have a porch right by a lake, and are surrounded by easy-going nature, what else would you want, right?

Images from HomeTours.tumblr.com