Cottagecore, Grandmacore, and Why We Should Stop Saving the Good Stuff

Why Does Grandma’s House Feel So Damn Cozy?

Cottagecore, Grandmacore, and Why We Should Stop Saving the Good Stuff

There’s something happening in decorating right now that I absolutely love. After years of gray everything, empty countertops, perfectly matched furniture and houses that looked like nobody actually lived in them, we’ve apparently decided we want our stuff back.

Floral wallpaper is back. Dark wood is back. Quilts, old paintings, brass lamps, little dishes, books stacked on tables, curtains with actual personality, china, baskets, needlepoint, vintage furniture and all the slightly weird things our grandmothers had around their houses are suddenly cool again. We’ve given it names, of course. Cottagecore. Grandmacore. Granny chic. Whatever you want to call it, I’m here for it.

But I don’t think we’re really nostalgic for Grandma’s decorating. I think we’re nostalgic for the way Grandma’s house felt.

Maybe Grandma Was Onto Something

Think about the houses you remember from when you were little. They weren’t necessarily beautifully designed. Nobody was standing in the living room trying to figure out whether the coffee table was giving transitional or organic modern. There was just stuff.

There were family pictures everywhere. Books and magazines. A blanket thrown over something. Lamps in every corner instead of one enormous overhead light making everyone look like they were being questioned by the police. There were plants that had somehow been alive since 1974.

There were dishes that came from somebody else’s mother, real wood furniture with scratches in it, curtains, little bowls full of things and smells coming from the kitchen. There was probably a chair nobody else was allowed to sit in. Somehow it all worked.

Nothing was selected because an algorithm told Grandma that beige boucle was trending that week. She bought things because she liked them. She kept things because they meant something. Other things just somehow ended up there and stayed for thirty years.

That’s what made the house feel different. It had history.

Why Are We Suddenly Obsessed With Cottagecore and Grandmacore?

I think some of this is a reaction to how perfect everything became. For a while, the ideal house looked almost untouched. Everything was neutral. Everything coordinated. There was nothing on the counters. There were no cords anywhere. Apparently nobody owned mail.

And those houses could be beautiful. I love a clean room as much as anybody. But somewhere along the way, beautiful started becoming a little sterile.

Then cottagecore showed up with its flowers and gardens and old dishes and linen and handmade things. Grandmacore took it even further and basically said, screw it, bring back the china cabinet.

And people loved it.

Life has gotten incredibly fast. Everything is disposable. We replace things constantly. We see perfectly styled rooms every time we pick up our phones, and trends come and go before most of us have even finished painting the room from the last one.

Maybe we’re craving things that feel like they’ve been here awhile. Maybe we want a little permanence. Maybe we want our houses to feel like somewhere we can actually exhale.

I Don’t Want to Copy Grandma’s House

I think this is where people can misunderstand these trends. I don’t necessarily want my house to look like my grandmother’s house. I want it to feel like it.

There’s a difference.

I don’t need to recreate an entire room from 1983. I can take the things older homes got right and mix them with the way I actually live now. Give me the old wooden table with a modern chair. Give me floral wallpaper with clean bedding. Give me Grandma’s china next to the coffee maker I ordered online.

That’s what makes a home interesting to me. It’s also why I love vintage lighting so much. One old-looking fixture can give a brand-new room a little soul. The same thing happens with an old mirror, a worn wooden dresser, an antique frame or a quilt.

I talked about this recently in The Lighting Mistake That Makes Your House Feel Like a Waiting Room, because lighting is one of the easiest ways to give a room that warm, lived-in feeling. And yes, I’m still firmly against the big light.

You don’t need a house full of antiques. You just need some things that don’t look like they all arrived on Tuesday.

This is really the whole idea behind How to Make Your Home Feel Collected, Not Decorated. The rooms I love most have old things, new things, expensive things, cheap things and completely ridiculous things living together. They look like somebody has been slowly adding to them while actually living a life.

And Then There’s the Good Stuff

There is one Grandma tradition, however, that I think we need to talk about.

The good stuff.

You know exactly what I mean. The good dishes. The good towels. The good sheets. The fancy candles. The crystal glasses. The beautiful serving bowl. The blanket that’s somehow too nice to put on the couch. Sometimes the good stuff spent its entire life waiting for company.

And listen, I understand it. A lot of those things were expensive. They were wedding gifts. They were special. People took care of what they had because replacing things wasn’t always easy. There’s something beautiful about that.

But I also think we’ve inherited this strange habit of saving beautiful things for a life we’re apparently going to start living later.

And I don’t want to do that anymore.

Your Random Tuesday Counts

Burn the candle. Seriously. You’ve been looking at it for six months because it was expensive and smells amazing. Light the damn thing.

Put the good blanket on the couch. Drink your coffee out of the beautiful cup. Use the linen napkins even if you’re eating takeout. Put grocery-store flowers in the crystal vase. Sleep on the good sheets. Wear the perfume. Put the beautiful serving bowl on the table even if the thing you’re serving out of it came from a box.

Your life is happening right now. Not when company comes over. Not when the kitchen is finished. Not when the kids are older. Not when you’ve made more money or finally gotten everything organized.

Today. This completely ordinary Tuesday counts too.

Maybe That’s What We’re Really Craving

The more I think about cottagecore and grandmacore, the less I think they’re really decorating trends. I think they’re a response to something.

We want warmth again. We want handmade things and old things and imperfect things. We want flowers and books and quilts and lamps glowing in the corner. We want kitchens that smell like something is cooking. We want houses where you can put your feet up. We want things with stories.

Maybe after spending years trying to make our homes look perfect in pictures, we’re remembering that homes aren’t actually supposed to be pictures. They’re supposed to be lived in.

And living is messy. There are dog toys on the floor and somebody’s sweatshirt on the chair. There are coffee cups on the counter, fingerprints on the refrigerator and scratches on the table.

That’s not ruining your house. That’s the whole damn point of having one.

Keep the Memories. Use the China.

This is probably my version of grandmacore. Keep the old stuff. Keep your mother’s jewelry box. Keep the weird pottery. Keep the dishes someone gave you. Keep your kids’ artwork. Keep the old photographs and handwritten recipes and furniture with scratches that remind you exactly how the scratch got there.

Mix those things with new things you love. Buy the beautiful wallpaper. Hang curtains with some personality. Find the ridiculous vintage lamp. Get the pillow that makes absolutely no sense but makes you happy every time you see it.

This is exactly why I design Sandy Beach Decor the way I do. I don’t want to sell you a matching room in a box. I want to make pieces you can bring into the home you already have—the one with the family pictures, inherited furniture, kid art and all the weird little things that make it yours.

And then actually use your house. Don’t turn it into a museum of things you’re afraid to touch.

I don’t want to spend my life protecting my belongings from my life.

Bring a Little Grandmacore Home

You definitely don’t need to turn your house into Grandma’s parlor to get this feeling. Start with one thing that adds a little age, softness or personality. A floral or vintage-inspired wallpaper, curtains that actually make a statement, a pillow that looks like you found it somewhere interesting or a beautiful old-fashioned light can be enough.

Mix those pieces right in with what you already own instead of trying to recreate an entire “grandmacore” room. That’s really the idea behind Sandy Beach Decor anyway. I want to help you create a home that looks like you, not a showroom.

That’s also the idea behind something I’m calling The Collected Home. It’s not about buying an entire new room. It’s about finding the one piece that makes your room more interesting and mixing it with the old furniture, family treasures, flea-market finds and weird little things nobody else has.

Because the best homes aren’t perfectly decorated. They’re collected over a lifetime. Looking for your one interesting piece? Browse Lara’s Picks and start with whatever feels like you

Lara’s Thought.

Maybe the reason Grandma’s house felt so special wasn’t because everything in it was special. Maybe it was because being there was the special occasion.

There was something comforting about walking into a house that had been lived in for years. You knew where the glasses were. You knew which chair was yours. You recognized the pictures on the walls and the smell coming from the kitchen.

The house remembered you.

That’s the part of grandmacore I hope never goes out of style. I want a house that remembers us. I want the scratches on the table and the family pictures and the lamp that’s been moved to four different rooms because I refuse to get rid of it. I want the things my kids made mixed in with the things I bought simply because I thought they were beautiful.

I don’t want a house full of beautiful things waiting for my life to happen. I want the beautiful things to be part of my life while it’s happening.

So use the china. Light the candle. Put the good blanket on the couch.

It’s Tuesday. That’s special enough