Kitchen Decorating Basics

Decorating a kitchen is a great way to add color and inspiration to a room that is mostly focused on function.
The kitchen is a place formed for function and focused on the necessities of food preparation. It doesn’t have a lot of room for decorative considerations. However since cooking is a creative form of art, you want a kitchen that will inspire the chef, whose very atmosphere will propel that chef to new acts of culinary creativity. Luckily, there are a variety of decorating techniques that can be used to spruce up your kitchen without detracting from the inherent function of the space.

Kitchen Tools as Decor Items
The first thing you should do is look at the functional accessories themselves. Spoons, bowls, knives, even electronic cooking accessories can all be purchased in matched styles and colors in order to create a concerted effect throughout the space. Choose from rustic wooden accessories, modern stainless steel, or even feature copper and brass products, displaying these prominently while leaving other day to day pieces in cabinets and drawers.

One of the biggest secrets to effective kitchen decorating is using the walls. While all horizontal surfaces such as floor, shelves, and counters need to be used to do the work of the kitchen, the walls are wide open, free for you to work your decorative creativity. Imagine your kitchens walls as being wide open canvases, blank, ready for you to fill them with anything that you can imagine.

However when decorating your kitchens walls, it’s important to be aware of the inherent hazards of the space. This is a place of heat, of spills, of drips and of splashes. Your kitchen can cause all sorts of messes, and if you have fragile or expensive wall decorations they can be ruined over time. Instead you should opt for durable, rugged pieces in the kitchen. Things crafted from wrought iron or protected hardwood can be especially good. Glass protected photographs and picture frames are also an interesting possibility.

The Kitchen as a Family Centre
A lot of kitchen décor is related to family, and tries to reinforce the idea of the kitchen as the heart of the home. This can include signs with interesting sayings on them, pictures of family members, or cute caricatures of family life. Replicas of Norman Rockwell pictures are very popular in these spaces, as are country rustic decorative items.

One element which has more power than you might expect in a kitchen is color. Certain hues can alter the way we perceive the world, changing how we react emotionally, socially, and personally with the people in a given environment. Generally you should try and stay away from hot colors in a kitchen, as this space will already be rather warm.


Choosing Colors in the Kitchen
Red tones are very interesting in a kitchen setting, because this color can actually make people hungrier. Using data taken from psychological experiments, restaurants have been using this fact for years to entice people to follow their hunger into their establishments. This can also be a powerful way to add a little inspiration to your cooking endeavors. However you have to be careful not to over use red tones, as they can lead to over snacking, over tasting, and over heating in a kitchen environment.

An opposite effect is true of blue colors, as the presence of these tones can actually make a person feel less hungry. This is because there is very little edible blue food in nature, and so when we are exposed to this color our bodies naturally turn off sensations of hunger. Using blue in the kitchen can help an overweight chef with a dieting problem, but if used too heavily can completely steal the inspiration from food preparation.

Middle-of-the-road colors that will work in most kitchens includes greens and browns, as well as a variety of earth tones. These match the colors of foods fairly well and as such help to reinforce the basic nature of the environment. They also provide a sense of warmth and comfort that is often associated with family and friends.

Decorating a kitchen can be a great way to turn a space that is primarily functional, into an amazing and inspiring room where culinary art is created. This can be done through the arrangement of colors and elements, emphasizing the walls as canvases across which you can stretch the creative meanderings of your fondest decorative dreams.