Add Color Accents to Your Kitchen By Tori Spade

When it comes to kitchen layouts, contemporary designs typically call for plain, mundane styles and arrangements. Why not kick up your kitchen design a notch by incorporating color? Appropriately mixing and matching elements of color with your current kitchen appliances and eating areas will instantly give your home a boost in energy and brightness no matter how cold or dreary the weather.

Decorate the Appliances

If you have purchased your home or apartment within the last two decades, chances are your kitchen includes all or mostly stainless steel appliances. Or, maybe your home features all black or off white fixtures. By replacing some of your home hardware, such as oven door handles or microwave frames, you can create a truly unique style of your own. If you do decide to pair your otherwise boring appliances (sinks included), be sure to select a few colors that match an overall theme. Otherwise, you can easily get carried away; you do not want your home hardware project looking like a rainbow exploded!

Trim the Countertops

Whether laminate, wood or metal, your countertop is an easy area to incorporate color. Unlike your appliances, however, using subtle hints of color to match your already existing materials is wise. Often, simply refinishing the wood or relaying a more decorate laminate top is all you will need. Speckled, multi-colored laminates work best as they look and match practically any color scheme as well as disguise burn marks and grease stains that can make wooden counters look messy and warn.

Similarly, your coffee bar or eat-in area should be consistent with your countertops. It is crucial that you consider your color palette prior to purchasing and renovating any aspect of your kitchen!

Get Fancy With the Flooring

As a child, it is endlessly entertaining to sprint full on into your kitchen and zip across the floor in your socked feet. Ensure that your flooring is safe and installed correctly to avoid any permanent water damage (critical around the dishwasher if you have one). What many homeowners make the mistake of doing is simply overlooking your flooring, erring on the side that plain is enough. Wrong! Simply replacing a few feet of your kitchen floor near the eating area will instantly add character to your room. Accent tiling that matches your overall style is uncommon and sophisticated, instantly transforming your room.

Wallpaper & Curtains

While many homeowners choose simple floor patterns, they conversely go overboard with loud, oftentimes obnoxious wall paper and curtain patterns. Keep it simple! By limiting the number of colors and bold designs (note: never choose checkers) used, you allow the eye to travel around the room instead of focusing on one area. This is crucial, as wall paper can easily become an eyesore competing with your kitchen cabinet hardware.

Dress the Door Knobs

What is a cabinet without proper door knobs and pulls? Again, as you paired your appliances with matching plastic frames or other drawer handles or pulls, do the same courtesy for your cabinets. Keeping the same colors consistent on varying eye levels will again help any onlooker's gaze move throughout the room, noticing how well the colors of your cabinet knobs compliment each other instead of how they compete for your undivided attention!

Accessorize With Pizzazz

Last but certainly not least, any properly decorated kitchen must include the proper accessories. From utensils to copper pots, you should again be consistent, especially if you plan to utilize any of these elements as decorations. Additionally, towel racks should match the same metal and finish as your cabinet knobs. If you think your kitchen colors are too bland, add an instant splash of color with bright, cheerful pot holders and hand towels. If you can't decide whether to add more color or not, slightly close your eyes and notice the overall colors, they should all mesh and blend to create a soft look, not a glaring reminder of the once popular neon colors!

Tori works for Your Home Supply (YHS) the definitive website for home improvement tools, and gardening supplies. Your Home Supply offers a wide range of cabinet hardware and matte black cabinet knobs. Visit them now to see their selections. With a wide range of finishes and styles Your Home Supply can help you add color accents to your kitchen.

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Remodel Your Kitchen With Kitchen Cabinet Hardware By Tori Spade Platinum Quality Author

When you are planning a home remodeling project for the kitchen, do not overlook your kitchen hardware as an important component of your new kitchen design. A kitchen renovation is not complete until all of the little details are taken care of, and your cabinet hardware is one of those little details that should not be overlooked because it can make or break the look of your kitchen! When your cabinet hardware is in good shape and works well, then you likely don't think about it much, but when that hardware gets shabby or starts to come loose from the cupboard doors and drawers, then you notice there's a problem, because it is throwing both the look and the functionality of your kitchen off.

So when you are planning your next kitchen makeover, be sure to include new cabinet hardware on the list. New cabinet handles and knobs can serve several different purposes. For a complete kitchen makeover, they provide the great finishing touch the room needs to tie the whole look together and let the room look and feel "done." But installing new kitchen cabinet hardware is one of those kitchen ideas that is really effective and versatile, because you do not even need to install all new cabinets to take advantage of its benefits. In fact, you do not even have to paint or stain your old cabinets again to get a new look with new hardware.

When you set out to choose your new hardware, take a moment to think about what you want it to accomplish. Obviously, you want it to look good and work well, so keep that in mind while you shop. Look for pieces that are well made and easy to clean. Ease of cleaning is definitely important for kitchen hardware, because it is going to be exposed to food spills and liquid spills and grubby hands. It is important that the pieces be well made, because they will see a lot of use in their lifetimes and you want them to hold up. And, of course, you want to choose something that fits in well with the decor of your kitchen. A warm, traditionally decorated kitchen would pair well with oil rubbed bronze knobs and pulls, and a contemporary and modern styled kitchen pairs well with stainless steel and other sleek metal hardware. Choose the pieces that suit you and your lifestyle best and you'll love what a difference your new hardware makes on your cabinets and your kitchen as a whole.

Tori works for Your Home Supply (YHS) the definitive website for home improvement tools, and gardening supplies. Your Home Supply offers a wide range of kitchen cabinet hardware and home lighting.

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