Nothing says inviting like a cozy cottage kitchen. With these few easy tips, you can create the perfect space to make friends and family feel right at home.
Open and Airy
Do away with bulky cupboards. Instead, consider placing open shelves where your upper cabinets would be. Proudly display your dinnerware on these shelves. If your dinnerware consists of mismatched items, that’s okay. It only accentuates the cottage look.
Make a U-Turn
This U-shaped galley kitchen takes full advantage of its ceiling height and the available light. The location of the sink provides views outdoors, while glass-front, white-painted cabinet doors help make the space feel open and generous. Continue reading →
Saving space by installing the microwave over the range has been standard kitchen protocol for years. But that practice is on its way out. As home buyers begin to favor universal design principles, keeping necessities accessible for the entire family becomes ever more important. Consider moving Continue reading →
Long gone are the days when kitchens were dreary workspaces, hidden behind closed doors. Today’s kitchens are central to everyday living and special-occasion entertaining, often doing double duty as family rooms, offices and media centers, as well.
“The kitchen is truly the focus of the home today,” says New York-based interior designer Andrew Suvalsky. “A great kitchen design will give essential clues to how the rest of the home can and should develop.”
To meet the growing demand for showstopping kitchens, manufacturers now offer cabinets, countertops and fixtures in all of today’s most popular design styles, from Old World to modern, city chic to country cozy. And your options aren’t limited to what you’ll find in the kitchen showrooms, either. Andrew and many other designers also turn to antiques stores, high-end furniture makers and salvage resellers when sourcing kitchen projects.
Whether you’re designing your kitchen to match the decor of other rooms, or planning your whole home’s look around the kitchen, you can make it a beautiful reflection of your personal style.
Open and inviting, country kitchens allow you to enjoy the feeling of a weekend getaway right in your own home — even if you’re smack in the middle of suburbia (Check out our Farmhouse Style Sinks by Bates & Bates). Farmhouse tables and furniture-like cabinetry are popular conventions, and an eclectic mix of finishes helps create a comfortable, lived-in look. Country colors range from primary red, yellow and blue to aged tones of cream and pale yellow; whatever hues you favor, mixing rather than matching is the country way to go.
Sleek, sexy and sophisticated, the modern kitchen is designed to keep clutter to a minimum. Reflective surfaces and high-tech materials are central to the most modern kitchen, and exotic woods add a touch of luxury without frills or fabric. Iconic midcentury seating, including Bertoia stools and chairs by Eames and Cherner, are often chosen for a classically modern look; seating made of Lucite and highly polished woods is often chosen for a more current interpretation of the style.
Whether the space is large or tiny, cottage kitchens are designed to feel cozy and enveloping. With their homespun touches and imperfect finishes, cottage-style kitchens are always one of a kind and serve as the perfect backdrop for offbeat art and collectibles (Check out our country style Kitchen Island by Lyn Design). If you’re an avid flea marketer, this style will allow you to turn your weekend finds into everyday pleasures. To marry serious cooking with whimsical style, look for high-end appliances in white or retro colors.
Where function meets family friendliness, you’ll find the contemporary kitchen. The look is a carefully curated mix of materials: new and old, casual and polished. And because cooking with company has replaced cooking for company as the entertaining ideal, today’s kitchen has plenty of room for hosts and guests to work and interact. Add gourmet cooking equipment, comfortable, durable seating and lots of open space for a kitchen perfectly suited to 21st-century living.
Imagine a small hotel in the South of France, or a contessa’s villa on the Amalfi Coast. The colors are sun-dappled. The surfaces are elegantly timeworn, and the atmosphere is pure romance. To replicate that Mediterranean ambiance anywhere, look for Provencal fabrics in rich tones of russet, cobalt and ochre, warm-toned wooden cabinetry, and handmade ceramic accessories. Rough-hewn textures, copper pots and rush seats add the final touches.
Whether you live at the beach or just wish you did, you can count on cool shades of blue, green, white and sand to create a vacation-time mood. Seagrass and wicker seating are casual, comfortable and coastal. Fabrics and flooring (Get the look! Check out our natural stone flooring by Agora!) designed to stand up to wet bathing suits make coastal-style kitchens easy to care for, and window treatments that allow for maximum sunlight will have everyone in let’s-get-to-the-beach mode bright and early.
If you yearn for a time when materials were solid and craftsmanship was king, Old World design will embrace you in history and luxury. Look for dark mahogany finishes with lots of carving and detail, countertops with ogee or bullnosed edges, and stone or wooden floors. Add historical accessories and heavy fabrics, and enjoy time travel comfortably in your own home.
Turkey on Thanksgiving, ham on Christmas Eve and chocolate chip cookies after school. A traditional kitchen is the perfect backdrop for a life that centers on family, friends and holidays — but its clean, comfortable look is welcoming 365 days a year. Paneled or glass doors on cupboards contribute timeless style, and latched or icebox hardware is often added for period detail. White tiles add a clean look and help reflect light, and artisanal or vintage-look light fixtures add special touches.
Ready to start your next kitchen project? Let the Experts at PlumbTile Help! Give one of our experts a call at 1-866-369-8180 and receive a discount on your purchase! Also visit us at www.PlumbTile.com!
You don’t have to do a total down-to-the-studs bathroom renovation in order to update your stuck-in-the-80s bathroom. Homeowners may have a more extensive number of options when it comes to updating a bathroom, but even if you are a renter, there are numerous, affordable ways you can transform an outdated bath into a modernized space.
1. Paint
You can always rely on a fresh coat of paint to revitalize everything from a small side table to an entire room. Choosing a trendy color can wake up a tired bathroom. Painting the ceiling a complementary color that is a little lighter than your walls will make a small bathroom appear more spacious. It has become increasingly popular to choose something more interesting than white for the color of your ceilings.
Red walls take this bathroom from boring to bold.
2. Wall decor
After you paint your walls, you don’t want to put back the same boring, outdated wall decor that you had. One of the most eye-catching pieces of wall art in your bathroom can be a mirror (view our mirrors by Fairmont Design). Splurge a little and get a modern style mirror or a spectacular vintage mirror that will complement a modern decor. As for any other wall art that you hang, make sure it exemplifies the simplicity and sophistication of modern design. Keep in mind that glass shelves can be a functional form of wall art in an updated bathroom design.
3. Lighting
With all of the modern and contemporary bathroom lighting styles that are available, you can easily find some that will fit your budget and your decorating theme. Replace your current, unattractive lights with modern style lighting (view our large selection of bathroom lighting). You might even find new areas in the room where a wall sconce or mini pendant light can draw attention to a previously unnoticed area of the room.
4. Clear the clutter
An incredibly inexpensive way to modernize a bathroom is to remove the clutter from your counter top and all other areas of the room. If you browse through photos of modern bathroom designs, you’ll see that there are few items on the countertops and what is there, is neatly organized in some type of storage container. You can add some freestanding or wall-hung shelves to your bathroom as part of your updating plan. When you add open shelving, it’s imperative that you keep those shelves organized, not cluttered.
5. Details matter
Removing old towel racks and replacing them with more modern style options is a quick and easy project. You’ll also want to replace worn out, unattractive towels with more luxurious, trendy towels to further improve the appearance of your bathroom. Removing outdated hardware on your cabinets and replacing it with a more modern option can instantly modernize your bathroom. By directing your attention to small details such as vent covers and switchplate covers, you can add visual updates that will have a significant impact in the overall appearance of the bathroom.
6. Floors
If you have the option to do so, updating the floor in your bathroom is a project you should move forward with. This could mean replacing the floor with bathroom tile or painting an unsightly wood floor a color that is compatible with your updated decor. If you rent and can’t alter the flooring, you can rely on a rug to hide an ugly, outdated floor covering.
7. Special features
Modern bathrooms are all about personal style and comfort. Waterfall faucets (Check out our widespread faucets by Graff Here!) and rain-style shower heads (Altmans Rain Showerhead) can enhance the elegance of you bathroom. Heated towel bars can elevate the luxuriousness of your bathroom. It is currently trendy to take steps to bring elements from the outdoors into your modern home design. Adding a few lush green plants to your bathroom decor is a great way to celebrate nature and beautify the room.
Ready to refresh your bathroom? Let the Experts at PlumbTile Help! Give one of our experts a call at 1-866-369-8180 and receive a discount on your purchase! Also visit us at www.PlumbTile.com!
Do you have a small backyard? Think there is nothing you can do to “dress it up”? Read below for eleven simple tips on small yard designs!
It’s beginning to be that time of year, the time of year where we want to spend every part of our day outside basking in the summer sun. Try these ideas to turn your backyard into a relaxing outdoor oasis.
When it comes to designing your home’s interior, the architectural style of your house will largely dictate your choices. If you have a midcentury modern home, you will probably lean toward sleek and modern. A bungalow might be filled with Shaker style furniture and craftsman details. And if you have a home in the country or in the woods, then you can’t go wrong with a rustic design motif. These designs conjure up images of aged building materials and the oranges, yellows and browns of autumn. Here are 10 tips to help you design your rustic dream kitchen.
Updating or remodeling your bathroom can be very exciting. There is so many design elements to start thinking about. Bathrooms, big and small, need to always be well thought out and functional for multiple users. If you can avoid these 7 common design mistakes below, you will be well on your way to a bathroom you will love for a very long time!
In the last post of this series, 4 Signs that You Need a Kitchen Remodel, we talked about some sure-fire signs that it’s time to upgrade the kitchen in a home. Now, the second most important step in the process is deciding exactly how to spend on that remodel. How much will it cost to create that dream kitchen? How much is actually available to you?
When deciding on a kitchen remodel budget, it is often helpful to know where you are going with the project itself. What things need to be replaced, and how much will those replacements cost? Is there major construction involved (such as tearing down walls or building in all-new pipes), or it is simply a matter of hauling that old dishware out and hauling in the new one?
If you are completely at a loss, start by making a list of everything that is broken, stained, or otherwise undesirable right now. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:
- The fridge that gobbles electricity and/or no longer works properly.
- The sink that is scratched, cracked, broken, growing mold, or otherwise unsightly.
- That laminate flooring that is yellowing.
- Those broken tiles…or all of the tile.
- That old stove that is a huge pain to clean (trade up with a sleek glass-topped one).
If you aren’t remodeling out of necessity, you are free to make changes based on “because I want to.” Either way, getting ideas for sexy new layouts, color, textures, and more is a great way to start building a kitchen remodel budget. Try magazines, TV shows, or even the Internet to get more ideas than you can handle.
As you go, make note of items you want and their “average” prices. This will help you build a “want” budget. I.e., the budget required to have everything you want.
Finally, it is time to go through what is available to you. Contractors and designers have it easy because they will simply get the budget from their clients, but the client may have some difficulty deciding what they can actually afford. The two most common options to look into are:
Discovering what is available to you will give you a “have” budget. Quite often, you will find yourself with a gap between the “want” and “have” budgets. If this is the case, it is time to close that gap by shopping for better deals on quality kitchen remodel supplies. If you still see a gap after hunting down the best deals on what you need, you may need to put off some of those things on the “want” budget. Add them to your holiday or birthday wish list instead!
Following these steps will help you better understand and envision what is truly possible for that kitchen. Once you’re there, it is easy to start Planning a Kitchen Remodel, which just happens to be what the next blog in this series is about!