Because there is no one Provençe, there will be no one Provençal style in your home. It's up to you to assess the different styles and choose one that fits your home best.

Provençe, Sloan-Style

One thing I deeply appreciate about Annie Sloan's book Creating the French Look is that she takes on the thankless task of segmenting the French look into roughly eight categories.
From there we've got two Provençal sub-styles, Riviera and Luberon.

In rough terms: seaside or inland.

Luberon is the dry, mountainous Provençe chronicled in Peter Mayle's books (A Year in Provence is one). Riviera has a touch of the Italian, since it does border Italy, and it is "fresh and vibrant," as Sloan puts it.

For the Luberon-Provençe style, she recommends the use of lavender (the real stuff, not just the color), earthy ocher colors, soft white fabrics. For Riviera-Provençe, she advocates the use of summery-blue paint, blue or terra cotta tiles, and colorful, patterned linens.

Other Elements of Provençe For Your Home

Those are some of the easier changes you can make. What about larger remodeling projects? Since the Mayle/Luberon Provençe has become so popular, most of our points below concern that region:

1. Stone: Stone attracts instant attention. Due to its rocky environs, inland Provençe has plenty of stone walls, fences, and fireplaces. Create a manufactured stone veneer fireplace in your living area. Or you can mass stone within the kitchen around the oven area.

1. Ocher Colors: Ochers are easy to find with every major paint manufacturer. Check out our guide to Tuscan paint colors to see a number of ochers and where to find them.
2. Terra Cotta Flooring: True imported terra cotta tile, as you might imagine, is expensive. Bargain prices start at ten dollars a square foot, if you can find them. Like the ocher mentioned above, the Provençal style shares some similarities with the Tuscan, namely the terra cotta flooring. Pave Tile & Stone offers overstock hexagonal terra cotta for around $9/square foot (July 2012).
3. Antique French Oak Flooring: Terra cotta works great in limited areas, but do you want it all over the house? In living areas you might want something softer and warmer under foot. Distressed (artificially antiqued) oak flooring is more available than it was only a few years ago.
4. Vintage Shutters: Provençe can get quite warm, and with average temperatures in the Summer in the 70s, window shutters help to keep houses cooler. As a result, Provençe can sometimes appear to be paved with shutters everywhere. You'll need to search a bit to find antique shutters that aren't simply old, ugly, decrepit shutters. Etsy, that online marketplace of all things handmade, has a section devoted to antique shutters from barns and old houses or shutters crafted to look antique.
5. Give Furniture the Antique Look: The aforementioned Annie Sloan produces something called Chalk Paint. It's a deceptive name, because it implies that it might be chalkboard paint, the kind that you can draw on. No. Chalk Paint has a matte, chalky feeling and comes in some very Provençe-y colors such as Barcelona Orange, Napoleonic Blue, and Arles (the names don't necessarily reflect Provençe, just the colors). On top of that, Chalk Paint gives your furniture an instant "older but dignified" look. Alternatively, you could go for milk paint, which produces a similar look. Milk paint comes in powdered form and mixes with water. A company called The Real Milk Paint Co. produces Provençe-friendly colors such as Terra Cotta, Golden Rod, Raw Umber, and Butter Nut Squash.