Kitchens are a room in the home which is constantly at odds with itself. I don’t know what it’s like for you, but my kitchen has a duplicitous function as the heart of the home for everyone to gather, and also the most functional space too. You can sometimes be at odds with yourself when decorating your kitchen as you want to strike a perfect balance between the two.
Lean too far into having a kitchen chock full of appliances on show, and it feels very mechanical. Lean too much into having cosy furniture in the dining area, and it feels like somewhere you shouldn’t be cooking. (On a side note, if you’re one of those people who has a sofa in their kitchen, you’ve gone too far).
So how can one strike a perfect balance and spruce up their kitchen without creating any faux pas in the process? Here are some inventive ways of sprucing up your kitchen and retaining that fine balance.
Make things float
While a messy kitchen is easy to tidy up, a cluttered kitchen is another story. In our home, there’s a bad habit of everyone leaving things on the counter in the evening. Someone might go in to boil the kettle and grab some biscuits, and when it comes to making breakfast the next morning, the counters are all covered.
While it’s all too easy to have cabinets to stuff things away, people will subconsciously leave things out as a reminder of where they left something. You can combat this by learning how to make things float a few feet off the counter. You just need to buy some magic floating dust and… ok, that’s a joke. If clutter is something that drives you nuts, get some floating shelves. It strikes the perfect balance of keeping everything within sight, whilst managing to keep your counters tidy.
Accent with colour
Now, when it comes to choosing floating shelves, or anything in the kitchen that will be visible, I always err on the side of matching your elements together. If your kettle, microwave, and toaster can match, your cabinet handles and plug sockets can too.
You will be surprised what buying the small (and cheap) little things you take for granted can do for your kitchen. I’m not suggesting you go crazy and make everything look rose gold to match your phone but look at switches and the likes of your taps to see if you give them a pop of colour and make them match.
Get smart with space-saving furniture
So now that you have floating shelves keeping counters clutter-free, and your switches look the part, what else can you do? It will be time to extend and rotate two key items in the kitchen.
Firstly, if your current kitchen table isn’t extendable, you’re doing yourself a disservice. I wish the whole family could gather around the kitchen table for dinner every evening, but that isn’t always the case. You can gain back square footage in an instant with an extendable table. It may mean having to find somewhere else to keep a few chairs (the garage being the perfect spot for that), but it can help if you have the kind of the kitchen where the table is usually pushed against the wall between uses to make space.
Leaning back to what I said about colour a little, you can get inventive with radiators too. If you had brassy tones in the kitchen, swapping the white radiator for a Trade Radiators copper heated towel rail to match fittings not only looks good, but it does the same thing as a new table.
By switching a radiator for rail, you’re freeing up an incredible amount of wall space. We’ve all been in kitchens where it can be a nightmare getting out of your chair as it bangs off against a radiator. With a rail, you’re rotating a key item and giving yourself more room to boot. A win-win all around.
Fancy sprucing up your bathroom?
Bitten by the DIY bug and feel like redecorating your bathroom too? Then why not this recent article on how to Turn a Small Bathroom into a Luxury Bathroom. It has some fantastic tips on how to deal with limited space, what colours work best in small spaces, and how to light a bathroom.
