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For fans of Nancy Meyers’ Romcom Classic HolidayIt may be a shock to learn that the iconic English cottage shown in the film is not real. Jude Law, who plays Graham in the rom-com, Last year many people were given this news He charming country house The scene where Cameron Diaz’s heartbroken Hollywood executive, Amanda, retreats at Christmastime was actually filmed on a soundstage.
This revelation certainly came as a surprise to Georgia-based home designer Lucy Smalls. “I thought it was a real place,” she says. Independent“I didn’t realize they went to such lengths to build the exterior,”
So the 37-year-old interior designer embarked on a nine-month journey to create a replica of the film’s cottage that could be rented out. For fans of the 2006 film and those looking for a relaxing vacation,
Holiday“That was pretty basic to me,” says Small. And given the amount of interest his holiday cottage has generated, he thinks it says the same about his peers. “I just feel like I’m part of this romantic comedy group that really remembers these movies. There’s something very nostalgic about it.”
Opened in October, Holiday Cottage Available for short term rental. Located in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia, United States, its rates start at $399 per night during the summer months and $499 per night for the winter and fall months.
Small worked with an architectural designer, with whom he looked at Holiday “Repeatedly”, took multiple screenshots to ensure that the layout and design details were correct.
When it came time to put it on paper, he realized how much of the film was unrealistic. For example, in the film, only one bedroom is shown on the top floor. “They’re really trying to make it small and cozy and really intimate,” Small explains. “But when you look at the house from the outside, there’s obviously more than one room under that attic.”
In the small holiday cottage, he improved by adding a second identical bedroom upstairs. “We tried to make it so that if two couples are staying, they both have the same experience. So it’s same bathtub, same bathroom, same bedroom,” she says. “We just tried to make it fair so it wasn’t a good room and a bad room.” With a queen-sized sofa sleeper below, this space can accommodate up to six guests.
She also notes a curious detail: the cottage in the film has three indoor fireplaces, yet only two chimneys are visible on the exterior. She says, “It’s not just that there were three fireplaces, two chimneys; it’s that the fireplaces are so large that it’s very difficult to accommodate them with modern-day codes.” By his admission, most of the architectural designs in the film make no sense.
“We really had to do a lot of engineering in a house that—if it was built in the 1700s—wouldn’t have been like this in the beginning, but it would have had to be retrofitted. But in a soundstage in Los Angeles, they didn’t have to think about anything about it. So they did what they wanted,” she says. “In short, we’ve created something that makes more sense.”
In the film, the quaint cottage of Kate Winslet’s beloved Iris is “very old and dated”, explains Small. “It was designed to make Iris feel very irritable, and like a young person living this old woman’s life, and she doesn’t get out, and she doesn’t do anything.”
To fit Iris’ aesthetic, Small used Google Image reverse search to find decorative objects and furniture that closely matched those shown in the film. Ironically, he found that “old, useless stuff” was quite expensive.
She says that the things that were supposed to appear nerdy and fashionable were all expensive antiques. “If I look at that piece of film, it would be like $20,000, like that chair or that coat rack or something. And so having to find a lot of look-alikes, that was probably the biggest improvement.”
Although she declines to comment on the exact cost of the entire project, she shares that the most expensive aspect was “actually building it to modern codes”.
“You can’t have six-foot-high ceilings or a bathroom at the bottom of the stairs or things like that,” she explains. “And so trying to build this 1700s cabin to meet modern-day code inevitably makes the project much more expensive than a typical house of that size.”
But then again, “I told all the contractors throughout this case that it doesn’t matter what you think, or how we typically do things, or even what I myself would choose,” she says. “The only thing that matters is that it looks like the movie.”
Currently, the holiday cottage is already booked till May 2026. Dates for next summer are still available in June and July during the area’s off-season.
“I’m incredibly fortunate that I’m at a point in my career where I can work on passion projects that people really love,” Smalls says proudly, “and so it’s great that this is one of these, and people have responded really well to it.”
She admits that if a real cottage had been used in the film, she would not have built her holiday cottage. Because if this were a real place, As used in the Illinois House home alone, He would have risked his escape being labeled “the next best thing”.
“I didn’t want to make something that was second best,” says Small. “In our case, it’s the only thing.”