How to make your home look like an Alpine chalet

While browsing the Internet for metal brackets for kitchen shelving, I came upon the work of Etsy seller David Wolfer. His wood brackets are just gorgeous (and inexpensive).

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Work like this is often described as “gingerbread trim,” and those of us in the U.S usually associate it with Victorian architecture—and rightly so. Victorian houses are loaded with the stuff.

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But Wolfer’s work would also be beautiful on a house with an alpine flair. Because his brackets have no profiles—that means the entire surface is flat, with no fancy grooves or notches at the edges of the wood—they feel especially Swiss or Swedish.

Look at all these cottages. They aren’t Victorian; they are decidedly European and would be right at home in the Alps. Who knows? Maybe some of them were built there; most of these images came from European websites:

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(The Swedish love their red houses.)

One of the things I initially loved best about our home’s exterior was its gingerbread trim. It isn’t original to the house, and my best guess is that it was added in the ’80s. I’m so happy a former owner decided to accentuate our steep chalet-like roofline by adding decorative trim with no profiles. I doubt I would have had the same vision.

We carried the look inside with our stair railing, and even our playhouse has a similar feel with the scalloped trim:

A really simple house with straight lines would look a lot more special with gingerbread trim. Add a few windowboxes and shutters, and you’d have a Swiss cottage in the making.

What do you think about this style of home? Could you or would you incorporate this kind of trim into your own house? •