Decorating Your Kitchen

There’s a difference between designing a kitchen and decorating it. Kitchen design is about placing the right things in the right places, and ensuring functionality and comfort in the room. Kitchen decorating, however, is about making the kitchen a nice place to work and eat in. It’s about adding personal touches that make your kitchen stand out from the others, and make it feel like your own.

Often, it’s the decorating part that leaves most people stumped. How do you decorate a kitchen without giving up some of its practical functions? Well, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. With a little know-how, you can decorate your kitchen the way you want while keeping it perfectly usable. Here are some kitchen decorating ideas to help you out.

Design inspirations

Most people get their picture of an "ideal" kitchen from what they see in magazines and brochures. But while these are certainly attractive, not all of them are actually practical. Many of them are pre-arranged studio shots, and let’s face it, no kitchen can look impeccable unless you never use it. And if you look closely, these "perfect" kitchens don’t really meet quality standards. Simply put, they’re not the kind of kitchen you can really live with.

However, you can use these pictures strictly as design inspirations. Use them to get an idea of the colors, patterns, and materials you want. You don’t have to get the exact same thing as in the picture (they’re often overpriced, anyway), but you’ll know what to look for when it’s time to do the shopping. Just find a kitchen photo gallery on the internet and you should get lots of ideas for your own kitchen.

Kitchen furniture

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably integrated your kitchen with your dining room, or maybe even your living room. This usually involves the use of furniture to help you stay comfortable, whether you’re working or enjoying a meal. But design-wise, furniture can also lend a decorative touch to your kitchen. Take your time to find stylish pieces that are comfortable and suit your décor at the same time.

At the very least, you’ll want a sturdy dining table and matching chairs. This can double as your work table, although you can get a separate one if you have enough floor space. You should also consider storage cabinets, as they tend to dominate the kitchen visually. Corner cabinets usually work well for small spaces, while standalone closets often make a good fit for larger rooms.

Choosing your cookware

Your cookware is an important part of your kitchen, both from a practical and aesthetic point of view. You want them to look good on the counter, but you want them to do their job at the same time. Fortunately, manufacturers have come up with quality kitchen cookware that’s both attractive and durable, and all within reasonable price ranges.

Some of the most popular cookware materials are cast iron, copper, and stainless steel. Cast iron has that old-school feel that suits country and traditional-style kitchens. If you’re more of a modern cook, you can go for stainless steel or copper, although the latter has some safety issues. Non-stick cookware is also popular, especially in the health-conscious crowd.

A comfortable workspace

Since most of your time in the kitchen is spent working, it makes sense to invest in a comfortable space that at least reduces your stress. A smooth, well-planned layout is essential, but you should also invest in subtle details such as a comfortable floor and ample elbow space. Carpeting isn’t practical, but you can get some soft kitchen rugs to soften your floor and decorate it at the same time.

Increasing your space simply means getting rid of things you don’t need. You may want to downsize your fridge, stove, or other appliances if they’re too big for your everyday cooking. The same goes for your table, counters, and storage. Downsizing frees up floor space and makes your kitchen feel roomier, even if it’s small to start with.

Kitchen accessories

Finally, throw in some kitchen accessories that personally appeal to you. This is where you get to display that impressive collection of wines, silverware, clay pots, or fine china. They don’t even have to be kitchen-related; if you want, you can display art on your wall or even put up a tapestry. It helps if you have a design theme going, as it ensures that all your pieces are tied together.

If you’re not sure which accessories to add, start with simple kitchen details like spice racks, dish drainers, and pot hangers. Because they’re functional, you can appreciate them both as kitchen tools and decorative accessories. What’s important is that they personally appeal to you. The goal is to put a bit of you in the kitchen, so if you like looking at it, go ahead and put it there.

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Sand As A Garden Design Element

Following both the practical need to produce food for the table and also the great traditions of European art and landscape design, gardens in Western civilization concentrate almost exclusively on providing a habitat for living plants (and occasionally fungi), perhaps with design support from architectural elements involving stone, wood and water. The influence of Zen Buddhism has made room for an alternative approach in some Eastern civilizations, most notably the Japanese. A Zen-inspired dry landscape (pebble or sand) garden could introduce a note of tranquillity in your life and an element of unusual interest in your garden.

Just as there are many different approaches to gardening in the West, from the grand formal style to the mixed media palette of the cottage garden, so too there is a range of approaches to what are variously described as “sand”, “rock” or “Zen” gardens. Many Japanese garden plans incorporate plants, water (as ponds or waterfalls), structures (such as bridges or lantern stands) and large rocks. The advice offered here follows the approach of architect and artist Leonard Koren, who suggests that the real value of the sand garden is antithetical to the effortless growth dynamic of plants. Its value is in the deliberate control of forms imposed by the gardener. Even rocks, often strategically placed landscape elements in Zen gardens, can assume too much importance, says Koren, and force the underlying statement made by the sand or pebble base into the background.

Zen gardens can be any size – you can even get table-top models! A practical minimum size for the home garden might be six foot square. It should be square or rectangular in shape, and oriented on a north-south axis if rectangular. Site preparation involves three stages. First, you want to be sure your garden is not invaded by weeds growing up through the sand. To prevent this you can spray the site with a systemic herbicide and then lay weed mat; or you can remove the top few inches of soil before laying the weed mat. Second, you want the sand or pebbles to stay within the confines of your garden or landscaping plans. If you excavated the site, you already have a pit to hold the garden and just need some kind of edging. Alternatively, your landscape professional can supply you with an attractive boundary in a suitable material of your choice that will retain the garden’s materials. The last stage is choosing the viewing point: a Zen garden is designed to be viewed from a single, fixed viewing point over a period of time. Decide where you wish to station the bench from which viewers will allow the patterns in your garden to have their soothing effect.
 
Original zen gardens were made from crushed white or light grey granite. You can choose alternatives – crushed limestone or the crushed shell and flint sold as poultry grit are suitable. The individual particles that make up the material can be of different size, depending on the degree of coarseness you require. Anything from fine sand of 0.25mm particle size to granite chips up to 14mm has its use. The larger sizes will hold a pattern longer against the action of wind and rain. Choosing “sand” of a lighter color enables the landscaping contractor or designer to make more effective use of shadow. You may also wish to have areas in which you use larger elements – pebbles of up to two centimetres. Once you have the material within the confines of the garden you can begin to arrange it.

The art of the Zen garden is in the placement of its components and in the patterns formed by raking the sand in various patterns. You can use an ordinary garden rake, but for the best effect you will want a Zen rake, which has its tines at appropriate spaces to gain the best effect from the raking. Patterns include whirls suggestive of the sea, curves to represent currents, spirals, zigzags and straight lines. The interaction of materials of various grades and of neighboring patterns creates a number of different effects. You can also build up sections of the garden into mounds, or create dips in the surface elsewhere. You can create – and this is a large part of the attraction of the dry landscape garden design – an almost unlimited combination of patterns on a three dimensional plane. Whenever you wish, you can pick up your rake and create a new view, returning to your viewing bench to let the pattern speak to you.

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