10 Classic Cocktails Every Home Bar Should Have

A good home bar isn’t about owning forty bottles — it’s about knowing ten drinks properly.

Get these classics right and you can make something brilliant for almost anyone who walks through the door. Below are the ten we’d build a bar around, why each one earns its place, and the print that puts its recipe on the wall — so you (or whoever’s mixing) never has to reach for your phone.

The ten classics

• Old Fashioned — whiskey, bitters and sugar with nothing to hide behind — the benchmark every home bar is judged by.
• Negroni — equal-parts, bittersweet and impossibly stylish; the drink that converts people to Campari.
• Espresso Martini — the modern classic that refuses to go out of fashion — dessert and pick-me-up in one glass.
• Margarita — sharp, salty and bright; the tequila classic that works all year round.
• Mojito — mint, lime and rum — the most refreshing thing you can put in a tall glass.
• Aperol Spritz — the colour of a good holiday; light, bitter and built for sunshine.
• Martini — gin, vermouth, ice-cold and uncompromising — the most argued-about drink in the world.
• Cosmopolitan — pink, punchy and unfairly dismissed; a genuinely great sour.
• Piña Colada — rum, pineapple and coconut — tropical escapism in a glass.
• Tom Collins — gin, lemon and fizz; the original long, refreshing highball.

Each of our cocktail prints carries the drink’s recipe alongside the artwork, so they earn their place twice over: they look good, and they’re genuinely useful when you’re mixing. Browse the full range in our cocktail posters collection.

Want the lot on one wall? Our cocktail recipe chart print collects the classics into a single piece — a proper centrepiece for a home bar.

How to style a home bar wall

Three things we’d suggest, having printed a lot of these:

• Pick a lane. Three or four prints in the same style beat ten in different ones. A matching set reads as deliberate; a mixture reads as leftovers.
• Frame consistently. Matt black is the safest bet behind a bar — it disappears and lets the artwork do the work.
• Hang lower than you think. A bar wall is viewed sitting down or standing at the counter, not from across a lounge.

If the bar sits in your kitchen or dining space, these sit naturally alongside our wider kitchen wall art range — and if coffee is more your morning ritual than cocktails are your evening one, the coffee posters collection follows the same style.

All prints are designed and printed in the UK, available framed or unframed. Browse the full cocktail print collection to build your bar wall.