[citation needed] The station was designed by Charles Holden in a modern European style using brick, glass and reinforced concrete.

[9] Compared with the other new stations Holden designed for the extension, Cockfosters' street buildings are modest in scale, lacking the mass of Oakwood or Arnos Grove or the avant-garde flourish of Southgate.

[10] The most striking feature of the station is the tall concrete and glass trainshed roof and platform canopies, which are supported by portal frames of narrow blade-like concrete columns and beams rising from the platforms and spanning across the tracks.

[12][13][14] In the late 2010s, the station car park at Cockfosters was proposed by Transport for London's property arm Places for London for property development, as part of TfL's plans to increase the amount of income generated from land in their ownership.

[23] Cockfosters tube station features prominently in the novel While England Sleeps by American author David Leavitt.

[24] A commercial for Foster's lager shown on UK television in the 1980s features Paul Hogan sitting in an Underground station near to a Japanese man who is looking at the Tube map on the wall.