Kitchens are utilitarian by nature and necessity, but that doesn’t mean they need to be all work and no play! There are plenty of ways to make your kitchen fun and stylish, without adding clutter or subtracting usable space. The way to do this is to focus on the background elements of your kitchen like the floors, cabinets, and walls while making bold choices to maximize impact, all while still retaining usability. For a few of these choices, you’ll need to use a certified home contractor, like Alair Homes Victoria to ensure that your stylish choices are built to last. Here are three ways to make some big changes to your kitchen, and pump up the fun!
Define with Tile
Installing tile in a kitchen is a no-brainer. It’s easy to clean and much less prone to water damage than hardwood floors. However, it can be hard to figure out how to transition from one flooring to the other, especially if your home has a more open floor plan. By using tile to define the “kitchen” space from the dining area or the rest of the home, you’re making a major visual statement while increasing the utility of your home.
Don’t be afraid to move the tile area outside of what is technically the kitchen. If you have a breakfast nook, a bar area or an island with bar stools on the other side, pushing the tile past these boundaries can be useful for keeping things clean, but also provide a fun, visual key as to where one area of your home begins, and another area ends.
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Go Bold with Color
Choosing a bold and vivid color for your kitchen is a brave move, but it can pay off in the end. This choice, used either on the walls or the cabinets, can update and change the entire look of the room without too much work. The key is to pick your color carefully, taking into account what tones will remain unchanged in your floors, fixtures, appliances and tile.
It’s also important to keep in mind just how much area you plan to cover with this bold color and be sure to adjust the hue for the amount of natural light the room receives. A very bright chartreuse green shade may seem like a fun cabinet color choice, until you realize that the south facing windows shed light on these cabinets most of the day, turning it into an almost neon green. Be sure to test shades in the natural light of your kitchen to find the best fit.
Focus on Materials
If you want to make an impact with your cabinets which, after all, are the majority of the visual space in most kitchens, you can forgo a bold color and instead choose to focus on a more naturalistic approach by using heavily grained wood. This is a fun way to use recycled materials and makes a lovely counterpoint to a home filled with more modern fixtures and appliances.
Wooden cabinet doors can come in nearly every iteration under the sun too, and a stain can take them from a standout piece to a more subtle compliment to the rest of your decor, while still maintaining some of the striking visual appeal.