Portfolio | Never out of style

When temperatures plunge, there's nothing better than coming home to a place that says warm and cozy. And for creating a welcoming, nurturing interior, there's nothing quite like country style.

So says design writer Chippy Irvine in her new book, Shades of Country: Designing a Life of Comfort (Taunton Press, $40). With its sense of history and place, and its emphasis on the functional and the practical, country style is, Irvine writes, "the antithesis of what many of us face every day when we walk out the front door."

"Country has never gone out of style," Irvine says in a phone interview. "It's something perennial, really, that people will always turn to." But for this former fashion designer who lives in a 19th-century farmhouse in Upstate New York, country style doesn't just mean that cutesy, cluttered cottage look.

Country has something for everyone, says Irvine, who identifies and lusciously illustrates six distinct "shades," including functional farmhouse, rustic, grand country, a Shaker- and Scandinavian-inspired "clean and simple" look, and something she calls "urban arcadia" (often the province of artistic types who bring a city edge to their rural retreats or give their city environs a country feel).

"Houses can also combine several different shades of country," says Irvine, whose much-renovated home is prominently featured in the book. The house, which she and her interior-designer husband, Keith, have been working on for 40 years, encompasses an enormous salon with soaring pillars she calls the ballroom, a beamed-ceiling sitting room, and a charming breakfast nook with beadboard walls and a toile banquette.

Country style is naturally eclectic, Irvine says. "You layer in new pieces with the family heirlooms. . . . The only time you update things is when they wear out or collapse under you." But above all, country style is low-key. "You really have to have some rooms you can walk in in muddy boots."

- Eils Lotozo