It has chestnut brown upperparts with a darker crown, pale supercilia, and black-and-white streaked sides of the head and neck.

The call of this species is a sharp cheek or explosive tuck, and the song is cheer oweet oweet cheery weather; ornithologist and bioacoustics expert Luis Baptista of the California Academy of Sciences compared it to the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

[3] H. leucosticta breeds in lowlands and foothills up to 1,850 metres (6,070 ft) above sea level in tropical wet forest and adjacent tall second growth.

Its neat roofed nest is constructed on the ground or occasionally very low in undergrowth, and is concealed by dense vegetation.

The white-breasted wood wren forages actively in low vegetation or on the ground in pairs in family groups.