Before and After: A Plain White Bathroom Gets a Rustic-Meets-Modern Redo with Cozy Cabin Vibes
Dreaming of a rustic, remote getaway? First, check out these 11 cabins and A-frames that’ll have you yearning for hibernation. And if you can’t go full-on bear mode or don’t have the time to escape to the woods at the moment, you can at least take a few design cues from cabins previously posted on Apartment Therapy. There’s knotty wood galore, plaid and flannel in spades, and fireplaces to fantasize about.
The keys to cabincore, if you will, according to AT writer Olivia Harvey, are heavy textures like flannel, fleece, and denim; warm tones like turmeric, maroon, and brown; and anything that feels vaguely autumnal. For a prime example of dreamy cabincore, look to Meng Ai’s cabin bathroom redo. Before, the white bathroom was perfectly nice, but it was missing a sense of rusticity that Meng and his husband, Andrew, wanted to spread throughout their cabin.
“We definitely wanted to warm it up a bit and make it a little more luxurious,” Meng says. “We always try to marry old and new. We wanted textures that complemented the old.” And old, in their case, is really old — their cabin dates all the way back to the 1800s, though it’s obviously seen some renovations in the years since. It was important to Meng and Andrew that this latest update felt in line with that history.
For the walls, Meng and Andrew replaced the white tile with pine shiplap, stained in Minwax’s Cinnamon. (This same shiplap and stain combo is repeated in the cabin’s kitchen, if you were curious.) “The most difficult part of the bathroom reno was not knowing if the dark stained wood on the walls and ceiling would feel like too much,” Meng says. But, he adds, the crisp white shower outfitted with light linens provides just the right balance. Meng and Andrew went with white square tiles for the shower surround and moved the penny-tile look to the floor instead.
The new decor has a bit of a rustic feel, as well. The couple moved some of the smaller antique crates from the kitchen to the bathroom to use for storage. The handy stool is a wood stump they found, and a vintage crock serves as a wastebasket. And the antlers? Those were in the living room before, “The antlers used to be in the living room, “but we felt like they fit better with the new vibe of the bathroom,” Meng says. As for the bathroom door, that was in place prior to the renovation but looks different amidst its new surroundings. “We hated it with the original bathroom but love it with the new design,” Meng says.
Meng and Andrew’s bathroom is a perfect lesson in How to Create Cabincore (see: warm colors, accessories found in the yard, and mixed-and-matched wood grains and tones), but it’s also a lesson in creating a space that feels extremely contemporary (see: the incorporation of bright white contrast and light, flowy linens). For more inspiration on how to blend a more modern aesthetic with traditional cabin bones, check out these seven contemporary-meets-cozy cabins.
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