Back when we started the process of creating a new kitchen, if you’d told me I’d end up with an all-white kitchen, I wouldn’t have believed you.
It is so far removed from a lot of the things I’d been lusting over on Pinterest. And yet, I love it.
My original vision for our kitchen was wood cabinets, grey or navy in colour, with marble effect worktops and brass or copper handles. I love love love this look on Pinterest.
But in the end, I felt that using such rich textures would make for an unbalanced room, with most of the attention being drawn to the kitchen.
I really like the current trend for plywood in interiors. This plywood kitchen looks really good, and I was seriously considering a plywood floor in our kitchen/dining space at one point, but Sam wasn’t so keen on that idea.
It’s a cost effective material, but we wanted something that we were confident would stand the test of time and the wear and tear of family life.
Because we were stripping back all the 70s chipboard wallpaper and replastering anyway, we gave serious consideration to leaving some brick exposed. I love the industrial look of exposed brick in a kitchen, and it worked well with all the other design elements we wanted for our kitchen area.
LOVE this unfinished plaster and brick combo.
But our kitchen was to be in the newly extended part of the room, so there was no lovely old textured brick to work with, just uninspiring new grey bricks.
We briefly considered brick effect wallpaper, but knew that the flatness would be too obviously fake. These brick effect tiles from UK Feature Walls have texture and shape and therefore look a lot more like a proper rustic brick. Had I discovered these during our renovation rather than afterwards, I think they would have worked really well in our kitchen.
Another design element that we spent a fair bit of time trying to make happen was steel doors and windows. Both Sam and I are absolutely in love with this look. We have a Crittal specialist two minutes drive away, and also spoke at length to a company that make more cost-effective aluminium versions of steel windows. But even then, the cost was too high, so we opted for the more predictable, but still very lovely, aluminium bifold doors and windows.
Had our kitchen been a standalone room, I think my design decisions would have taken a completely different turn. But as our kitchen is part of a larger space, encompassing a living area, dining area, and play space, it was really important to us that the kitchen remain a light, airy space that flowed with the room rather than stood out from it.
Our modern, white kitchen works really well for our space and I couldn’t imagine having any other style now.
You can see more photos of our (almost-finished!) kitchen over in this post.
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Thank you to UK Feature Walls for partnering with Sorry About The Mess on this post
