07/01/2026
I’m going to say something that’s going to annoy a few people: most “coastal” homes I see are doing the absolute most.
Rope on the stair rail. A ship’s wheel on the wall. Throw pillows with anchors. A sign in the kitchen that says, “Life’s a Beach.”
If you have to tell people your house is coastal, your house is not coastal.
Here’s the test. Walk into a Cape house — the kind that may have been in the family for fifty years, the kind that smells faintly of sunscreen and cedar in July. Count the nautical-themed objects. You’ll get to maybe three. A weathered oar leaning in a corner because someone actually rowed with it. A bowl of beach glass on the windowsill because the kids kept bringing it home. A painting somebody’s aunt did in 1987.
That’s it. That’s the whole vocabulary.
The coast is a confident place. It doesn’t need a font that looks like driftwood to prove it’s near water. It doesn’t need a sign. The light coming through the window is doing the heavy lifting, and the fewer objects you put in its way, the more it can speak.
The rule I’ve landed on after seven years of making paintings for people’s houses one shingle at a time: if you’re decorating toward a theme, you’ve already lost. If you’re decorating around the things you actually love that happen to be from here — you’ve already won.
