How to Accessorise your Kitchen

Now you have your brand new, and hopefully bespoke, kitchen.

Over the years you may have accumulated a random collection of pots and pans, accessories, cutlery, plates, and mugs.

However, now you have a brand new kitchen, you feel that this jumble does not make sense. In short, it does not fit your new kitchen style. Well, now is the best time, budget allowing, for you to accessorise your kitchen.

Pick a Theme

Good accessorization works when you have a theme in mind. The first things to think of are, when stripped back, what is the theme of your kitchen, and what’s your budget. Even on a shoestring judicious use of charity shops, upcycling, and jumble sales can get you the accessories you need, but they have to fit your kitchen’s style. Think about colours and materials used in your kitchen. For example, if your cabinets and white goods are black and white, then black and white accessories will fit, but earthy woods and ceramics are better in a bare wood and stone farmhouse kitchen. Metal and plastics fit better in a modernist kitchen.

De-Clutter

Now you have a basic idea, it’s important to strip back what you have in your kitchen. There are two main ways to do this. The first is to obviously get rid of items by selling them or donating them, or if they are too old, recycling. The second is to store them in your cabinets and drawers where appropriate. Strip the kitchen back to its core items and until it makes sense in line with your theme. Then ask yourself, which of your accessories fit it and should be on display and which can be stored until you need them.

Turn Functional Items into Decor

The kitchen, along with the bathroom, is the ultimate function room. Other rooms are designed to be relaxing or decorative or just for sleeping in. However, the kitchen is the nerve centre of the house and items displayed with it need to be functional. There is no reason why you cannot make these decorative too and within your theme. For example, there are a whole range of soap dispensers, boxes for flour, bread, salt and pepper holders, jars, and so on which match each other thematically and which can be combined to provide a consistent style in line with your kitchen while still being functional.

Group Items

If your kitchen is big enough, you can consider grouping certain items together to make attractive section of the room. This could, for example, involve a tea zone which would include items you use to make tea (and of course coffee) such as a display of tea types, lemons, a book on tea, cups and mugs, a teapot, the kettle etc… There could be a baking section, and sections for all kinds of kitchen-based activities. Grouping items together works best when there is a certain amount of space to emphasize their well constructed displays. You do not want too many items on display, but there’s no reason why other related things are nearby in storage spaces. If you have too many groupings in too small a space the kitchen will lose its sense of style and will just look cluttered.