The exterior of a Lake House - two stories with a garage and driveway.

Lake House Style: Inside the Carriage House at the 2026 Birmingham Home & Garden Inspiration Home

What makes a lake house feel like a lake house?

There is something special about a lake house that makes you want to slow down. We're lucky enough to call Lake Martin in Alabama home, and if there's one thing we've learned about decorating for it, it's this: you don't have to decorate a space to look like the lake for it to feel like the lake. It should be beautiful without feeling untouchable — comfortable enough for bare feet and wet swimsuits, welcoming enough for a house full of family and friends.

That was the idea we carried into one of the more special projects we've had the honor of taking on recently — decorating the Carriage House for the 2026 Birmingham Home & Garden Inspiration Home at The Heritage on Lake Martin. Birmingham Home & Garden partnered with Classic Homes and architect Michael O'Kelley to build a home celebrating lake and golf-course living, and Magnolia & Pine came on as a project partner to bring the Carriage House to life. The home opened for public tours July 9 through August 2, with proceeds benefiting Children's Harbor, which gives children with serious illnesses and their families a place to rest and just be a family, right here at their Lake Martin retreat.

The Carriage House was created as a retreat separate from the main house — a place for gathering, unwinding, and welcoming overnight guests after a day on the lake or the golf course. We weren't trying to build a room that simply looked like a lake house. We wanted to build one that felt like one: relaxed and refined, comfortable and collected, with just enough nods to life at the lake.

Designing a Lake House That Feels Collected, Not Themed

The best lake houses are lake-inspired, not lake-themed. A themed room reaches for every anchor, oar, and "gone fishin'" sign it can find until it feels more like a gift shop than a home. We started the Carriage House with a soft palette of neutrals and muted blues and greens, then layered in natural woods, linen, woven textures, and pieces with real character.

The Teak Root Coffee Table brings an organic, sculptural element to the seating area, while the Piper Table Lamp adds a subtle nod to the water with its white ceramic base carved with a school of fish. Small details, like a pair of Whitewashed Wooden Buoys, reinforce the lake setting without ever taking it over. That's the sweet spot for us: pieces that feel natural to the setting rather than pieces that announce it.

Making the Most of the Space

One of the biggest design challenges here was the architecture. Situated above the garage, a steep roofline ate into the wall space in a few key spots, so we got creative — hanging a big vintage spindle mirror right in front of a run of windows instead of fighting the roofline for flat wall space elsewhere. It turned into one of the prettiest moments in the room, proof that a limitation, worked with instead of against, can become the feature everyone remembers.

The room also had to do a lot of jobs at once — sleeping, entertaining, and somewhere to grab that first cup of coffee — without ever feeling cut up into cramped zones. The oversized L-shaped sectional anchors the main gathering space, with the Teak Root Coffee Table at its center and the Farrah Floor Lamp adding warmth and layered light. Across the room, the Old Pine Drawer Bank beneath the Vintage Spindle Mirror became a proper little coffee corner — a coffee maker and a few mugs set out on top, with a pair of leather chairs pulled up on either side for that first cup of the morning. It reads as one cohesive room instead of three stitched together.

A Trundle Bed Made for Lake House Living

We made a deliberate choice not to put another big bed in this room — the main house already had plenty of those, and a lake house guest room gets more use out of flexibility than square footage. So we had a custom Twin XL trundle built in solid poplar, a daybed on top with a second twin tucked underneath, ready to sleep two or sit as a daytime sofa when no one's visiting. We painted the oars ourselves to coordinate with the room and had our carpenter feature them prominently on the headboard, footboard and trundle drawer — a playful, lake-inspired detail that feels right at home in the space.

The trundle ended up being one of the most talked-about pieces in the room — guests loved that it managed to feel playful and practical at once, tucked right into the design instead of reading like an afterthought. That's the whole point of good design — it has to actually work for real life.

Original Art Throughout

Natural materials do a lot of the work in this room — warm woods, linen upholstery, woven textures, and earthy tones that feel easy and organic against the view outside the windows. Soft blues and greens echo the colors of the lake throughout — even the bathroom tile landed on those same tones.

We also love bringing original art into our spaces. Lauren Foshee's landscapes and abstracts add softness and color throughout the Carriage House, while the bathroom gave us a chance to do something a little more playful: two hand-cut fabric pieces from artist Mallory Norman's swimsuit collection — a bikini and a pair of swim trunks — displayed in floating acrylic frames. Their blue and green tones tie right into the bathroom tile while adding some unexpected personality to the room.

Designing for Real Life

At the end of the day, a lake house needs to be lived in. We wanted the Carriage House to work just as well for a family spending a weekend at the lake as it did for the Inspiration Home tour.

The sectional gives everyone plenty of room for a movie night or catching up with friends, and a Tabletop Tic-Tac-Toe Game sits out on the coffee table, ready to be played. A little "Lake Martin" ceramic tray by local artisan Sara Kathryn Hopple and a pair of whitewashed wooden buoys sit stacked together nearby.  Additionally, a Fabric-Bound Lake Martin Blank Book adds a personal touch — a pretty coffee table book on its own, or a guest book for the season's visitors if you'd rather put it to work. The White Garden Ceramic Stool can move wherever an extra seat or surface is needed.

Nothing here feels overly fussy or off-limits — and that's exactly how we like it.

What Lake House Style Means to Us

For us, great lake house style comes down to a feeling. It should be soft and inviting. Relaxed without being sloppy. Refined without being uptight. Comfortable enough for everyday life and beautiful enough to make you stop and look around.

Most importantly, it should feel like a home away from home. That is what we hoped to create in the Carriage House.

We are lake people ourselves, and we appreciate the finer things — a bit of an elevated aesthetic. But we also know the importance of being able to live in and enjoy your lake home.

The goal isn't perfection. It's creating a place where people want to stay a little longer — where kids can play games on the coffee table, where guests can curl up on the sofa, where someone can grab a book, make a cup of coffee, and look out the window.

In the end, the best lake houses don't necessarily look like lake houses. They feel like beautiful, comfortable homes that happen to be at the lake. And that's the kind of lake house style we love at Magnolia & Pine.

Shop the Carriage House

A handful of the pieces we sourced for the Carriage House are still available today — a few are one-of-a-kind, so once they're gone, they're gone.

Explore our Lake House Decor collection for more pieces inspired by the relaxed, collected style of Lake Martin living.

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