Are you bored with your kitchen? Fear not! I have some tips for you that you can action immediately, as well as future renovation ideas, for a better kitchen experience that makes you fall in love with cooking all over again.
I used to find myself running rampant around my kitchen when cooking anything from a simple snack to a family meal. My pots, pans, cutlery and various food products were all over the place, hastily shoved in a cupboard because I lazily put stuff away, so I could do something I enjoyed. However, I realised one day that this was creating much more work than it was saving. The precious minutes I saved by rushing were lost during the week when it came to using things.
This is when I decided to devise an organisational routine that took a little longer to pack away but saved me a lot of time while preparing meals. By placing items that are used at the same time in adjacent cupboards, like bowls and cereal, I managed to optimise the flow of my kitchen. This led to less mess and frustration while making food and increased my enjoyment of cooking tenfold.
When renovating their kitchen, people often forget about lighting and I for one am guilty of that too. It’s one of the small details that goes unnoticed most of the time and it’s something we take for granted. However, lighting influences your kitchen overall look and feel with striking designs, dimmer switches that set the mood for your evening and even help with cooking.
My wife is in love with Rose Gold, from her iPhone to her jewellery, so the perfect thing to accent our kitchen was lights with a Rose Gold enclosure. It looks like copper to me, but her face lights up (sorry for the pun) every time she sees them. I also added spotlights along the underneath of the cabinets to provide the perfect lighting for food preparation, as well as providing mood lighting for romantic evenings.
We’ve all seen the kitchen ads where they try to sell you an oak kitchen, cladded with wood from top to bottom like it would be unthinkable to add a touch of anything else. This is, of course, not true at all and you shouldn’t be discouraged from combining and contrasting materials. They can help create an interesting and rich layered feel where everything has its place, and nothing feels out of the ordinary. A feeling that can only be found in a bespoke kitchen.
From rustic woods to metals, leather and even ropes, you can add just about any material to your kitchen, although some require you being subtler. Rope and leather should be restrained to smaller details like baskets and hanging straps, while metal and wood can be used for cabinets and seating and fabric can be used for details like rugs and curtains.
People love to categorise everything, but this becomes limiting rather than being helpful. We get trapped with the mentality that you can only decorate your rooms with items from their section of the store. Once we venture outside of this bubble, we can find inspiration in the form of beautiful lamps, statues vases and even foliage.
Simple additions can add interest through varying heights rather than flat counter-tops, often providing function as well as being unexpected. This element of surprise can also help you make your kitchen much more personal and transform the whole feeling of the room. Potted plants can soften the hard textures of your counter-top, as well as providing you with herbs for your cooking. The presence of herbs adds a welcoming scent to the room, while adding natural beauty.
We tend to theme our rooms based on colour palettes rather than an abstract idea. I guess it’s more tangible to fit colours together than create something inspired by things we’ve seen or experienced. This could anything from something from a home on holiday, films, tv shows or time periods. Believe it or not, I once visited someone who had a yacht themed kitchen and while it was a shock, the idea was executed perfectly.
Personally, I adore the style of French homes and this love affair started a when I was a child visiting Normandy with my family. The French people are more relaxed and have a keen appetite for exquisite cooking and fine wine, a quality I like to think I share. To achieve this, I went with Belgian cupboards and a grisaille palette with Pike’s Peak Grey walls that offer subtle contract to the bright colours elsewhere in my house.
Hopefully you’ve found some inspiration in this article and you’re on your way to creating your very own stunning kitchen. Please feel free to send me pictures of your creations, I love to see all the amazing things people come up with in their home.