HOME SERIES: The Kitchen

The kitchen or in our apartment serves as the dinner table, the dancing space, the entry way, the crafting area, the bakery and half of the main room! Haha! But isn’t that like most homes now in this “open concept” world? (Major thanks to Chip and Joanna for making that the norm!) As everyone knows, the kitchen is the heart of the home and in this case it really is but it’s also front and center. This layout made decor + convenience + practicality quite the task to complete. I tried my best not to over decorate/clutter but still wanted the space to look pretty and inviting for guests. BUT ALSO functional and reasonable! If kitchen tools and products are all tucked away all the time then your kitchen ends up feeling more like a museum…

Now don’t get me wrong, our kitchen doesn’t always look like this. This is our kitchen on it’s “best behavior”, if you will! Typically there are dishes drying, waiting to be put up, probably an Amazon box halfway open on the counter and some bills that need to be filed, along with some crumbs, sticky spots that got missed/blended in with the granite. But sans all of that, this is what our kitchen always looks like in my mind at least! If I could narrow down 3 keys to kitchen decor/set up, I would say, Color Palette, Consistency & Convenience. Let’s dig in!

Color Palette

I went with a neutral color palette (surprise, surprise, I know), this allowed me to easily blend this kitchen space into the living room. Especially in this open concept era, you want your spaces to compliment each other well, this starts with a color palette. Pops of color are always welcome, I tend to opt for natural or faux greenery as mine but my mom, for example, tends to lean towards red tones in her kitchen/living space. It all depends on YOU and YOUR style and don’t let anyone tell you different! Maintaining a color palette in mind will absolutely come in handy when selecting your kitchen decor of course but also your kitchen tools such as a Kitchen Aid, coffee maker, cooking spoons and more. When registering or shopping for our kitchen items I knew I had always wanted a neutral palette for our kitchen so that no matter what our apartment kitchens would look like I had good bases that I felt confident would match with many things. I love that our drying rack blends with the grey granite and sink and that the coffee pot blends in the area it’s near because of the oven and black utensils in the canister.

NOW- for all of my MacKenzie gals (IYKYK), I personally love MacKenzie Childs products and Courtly Check is my jam, as you can see. BUT I still wanted to keep a minimal look, not overkill the MC! Selecting pieces that were mixed with glass or could actually be used and not just be for display helped make it feel a little more realistic and less museum-like if you know what I mean. When I share more about the living room you will see I scatted a few more MC pieces in there which really help tie the two spaces together.

Consistency

This guy kinda goes hand in hand with color palette and keeping the colors similar throughout the spaces that are blending into one giant space. But this also has to do with TEXTURE! Materials like wood, metal and fabric all need to work together in spaces like this. This is the first place you can go to when contemplating decor in these spaces. For example, our island centerpiece was an amazing Facebook Marketplace find from a local carpenter that custom makes things like that. I chose this because I loved the design but also to blend in some of that dark chocolate wood from our coffee table and side table in the living room into the kitchen. Just as how I chose to include some more clear glass pieces in the living room decor because of the glass in the built in shelves and MC jars on the counter.

Hopefully all of that makes sense but if you’re a visual person like me, imagine if I put all of my MC on top of the kitchen cabinets for display and all of my clear glass items in the built ins, followed by all appliances out on the counter, if would look weird right? Too much “same”, “same”, “same” all near each other. You want to mix all of these pieces well with each other throughout the spaces so that the consistency is even, creating a cozy and inviting space.

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Convenience

Okay, so now you’re like… “I got the decor down, now what? Do we just stare at it?” Great question because honestly, after I got done decorating this kitchen and the one in our last apartment, that’s all I wanted to do haha! But yes, you do actually get to use your masterpiece of a room now! Create this space for you! If you don’t mix or bake a lot, who needs a Kitchen Aid? Nbd! If you chop and cut fresh things more often, stack some cutting boards against your backsplash, put a letter board with a puny line or sweet picture frame in front. Whatever YOU need in YOUR space is what you should put out there! Then it can double as practicality and decor. I would love to fill my clear MC jars with perfectly stacked oreos and things like Khloe Kardashian but I know that I actually want to use them if they’re going to be taking space on my counter, so I filled them with rice and flour.

-final thoughts-

I love our kitchen and how it flows with our home. I hope this was helpful for anyone refreshing your existing or decorating a new space! Details for WHERE to find things in our kitchen can be found linked HERE as well as below each photo included within this blog post. You can also always reach me via DM in Instagram or email me in the “Contact” tab on the website. Happy decorating!