The kitchen often becomes the heart and soul of any home, but what can be done when the space feels a little bit…drab? There’s a tricky middle ground between wanting to spruce up a kitchen and feeling the need to do a full-blown renovation.
In this article, we recommend some (relatively) simple design and décor tweaks that will help you to truly make your kitchen your own. Whether it’s your first home or you’re an experienced owner, these tips can help!
A New Paint Job
A new paint job is one of the best ways to reclaim a space as yours in a home. Depending on how you go about doing it, painting a room can be fairly affordable and reasonably simple.
Your choice of color is entirely your own, but just keep this basic rule in mind: light colors make a room feel bigger. Darker colors usually make a room feel smaller because of the way they absorb light. For this reason, people usually choose softer colors in the kitchen, but to each their own!
As an added bonus, Amanda from PaintSprayerMag also advises that a fresh coat of paint can also increase the value of your home. There is no precise metric of how much, but some estimates suggest a boost of up to $2000 when the job is done well.
A New Backsplash
Backsplashes are fun because they present an enormous opportunity to get creative. You can go with a singular concept and feature tiles of one color, or you can get creative and mix and match various designs and concepts.
Installing a new backsplash is also not terribly difficult. Once the workspace has been prepped, the task can be accomplished using a few straightforward tools that are likely to set you back less than $100 at the hardware store.
If you want to get the job done quickly, you can get backsplash rolls that are installed more or less the same way as wallpaper, but it can also be very satisfying to install each tile individually.
Just be sure to let your creativity fly! A dull backsplash blends in and goes unnoticed, while a unique one can serve as an eye-catching focal point in any kitchen.
A Kitchen Island
For bigger changes, we have the kitchen island. Adding one of these kitchen centerpieces will be a bigger time and money commitment, but it is also a great way to make the kitchen your central family hangout.
Why is the kitchen island so great? Mostly because it’s a double-duty design element. While dinner is being made, it’s a great place to lay out all your ingredients, chop up the vegetables, and so on.
It can also serve as a place to sit down as a family and enjoy a shared meal. Granted, not every kitchen will be able to easily accommodate an island countertop. You need a moderate- to large-sized space to really make it work.
Upgrade Your Sink
It sounds like a weird idea, but there is actually wisdom in going all out on a new sink. Why? There are two reasons. New sinks, even with the cost of installation, are not very expensive. It’s a chance to personalize the dynamic of your kitchen without putting a lot of money into it.
Kitchen sinks are also just in constant use, both by the cook and by the people cleaning up after meals. This means that your new faucet and/or sink basin will be noticed on a regular basis.
Changing your sink is fast, easy, and affordable: all great buzzwords when it comes time to change the vibe in a room.
Tweak the Lighting
Lighting is vital in any room. If it’s done well, lighting will make a space look vibrant, and perhaps even larger than it actually is. If it’s done poorly, the lighting might make the room look smaller, or depressing.
It can be handy to invest in overhead lighting that can be dimmed or brightened to suit the needs of various situations. Some people also like to put lights beneath or even inside cabinets to further enhance the light aesthetic of a room. Some even consider awesome neon signs as well like those by Neon Mama to create both an additional source of light and to provide an interesting design feature.
If you don’t want to pay for all-new lighting, you can improve the look of a room simply by doing away with curtains and blinds. There is really no beating natural lighting anyway, right?
Get Eclectic
The kitchen is one of the best spaces in the home to mix and match décor ideas. You can accomplish this with relative ease simply by shopping around for mismatched chairs, rugs, and dinner plates. Granted, decorating in this fashion is always a little risky due to the simple fact that when you do it wrong, the room may clash in an unpleasant way. Do it right, however, and you’ll have a space that is truly your own.
If you’re trying to go for an eclectic design concept, it’s best to be patient. You may not find all the unique items that you want to fill the space with after just one trip to the store. It could take many trips to the thrift store before you find everything that you’re looking for.
Establish a Centerpiece
Regardless of your intent, every room has a centerpiece: a design element, which could include some great new blinds, that people notice and remember. It could be a chandelier, a painting, a light fixture, and I’ve even seen someone put their favorite coffee-maker in there.
As you customize a space, you can tie the entire design concept together by selecting a centerpiece that reflects the interests of yourself and your family.
In the kitchen setting, the centerpiece could be anything from a bouquet of flowers to a high-quality wine rack. It doesn’t necessarily matter what the piece is. The only real rule of thumb is that it should reflect both the general theme of the room, and your overall interests as an individual or family.