6 Common Mistakes to Avoid when Decorating the Kitchen

Do you feel like you can't get a clear decorative style in your kitchen? You're probably making some of these mistakes. Learn about them and how to correct them here!

Decorating the kitchen is an important task. After all, the kitchen is one of the most important places in the house.

However, in some homes, its aesthetics is often neglected. Despite this, it’s a space that you can benefit from if you have the right knowledge. In this article, we’ll share with you 6 mistakes that people often make when decorating the kitchen.

Importance of having a pleasant kitchen

Since the beginning of human life, the place where you cook has been key. In ancient times, the fire was located there and the activity of the home was centered around this space. Later, during the Renaissance, equipment, and decoration began to be perfected.

Today this room is a focal point for the design of homes and apartments. Over the years and with the development of technology, it has become a place for sharing, experimenting, and creating. Every day there are more and more appliances that make the act of cooking faster, more enjoyable, healthier, and easier.

Whether your kitchen has a rustic, modern, elegant, or vintage style, it must be functional and pleasant. It’s a space where you spend a lot of time and where one of the most important activities for well-being takes place: eating.

It’s not enough to choose the color of floors and furniture; it must fit the lifestyle of the person who’ll be using it. An article on design and ergonomics in the kitchen points out that correct placement of furniture and elements has an impact on a reduction of working time and facilitates movements, so it should be a basic issue.

Common mistakes to avoid when decorating the kitchen

A kitchen is a place that can seem difficult to decorate because it’s full of objects. Also, it’s first thought in terms of functionality.

However, there are small adjustments that can give a more harmonious and pleasant touch to this space. Below you’ll find the 6 most common kitchen decorating mistakes and how to fix them.

1. Avoid poor lighting when decorating a kitchen

The kitchen should be one of the most illuminated areas of the house, as well as the study or work area. It helps if there’s natural light from large windows.

However, if it doesn’t have natural light, it needs to have enough artificial light to prepare food easily and to be able to see its coloring correctly. This helps to prevent accidents and to make the space more harmonious.

Many kitchens are attached to laundry areas where there’s usually ventilation and light. If you want to separate these two spaces, opt for glass partitions that allow airflow. This material won’t unnecessarily darken the kitchen, like wood or drywall doors.

2. Too many decoration pieces

Having decorative details on all the furniture and walls generates imbalance and exhausts the vision. When thinking about decorating a kitchen it’s better to opt for simplicity. They are environments composed of many elements, so adding too much decoration will make it look overloaded.

3. Not taking advantage of the height and dimensions of the space

It’s common for people to place furniture that doesn’t fit well with the space. As a result, it generates a visual sensation of imbalance.

If the area where the refrigerator is placed is very large and your refrigerator is small, it’ll look like the place is incomplete and it’s uncomfortable to the sight. Likewise, if there’s furniture that cuts the wall in half, leaving a space too wide to the ceiling, there will also be an imbalance.

It’s not a matter of all the furniture touching the ceiling. However, the height should be used for storage in a smart and balanced way.

4. Avoid appliances that don’t match when decorating a kitchen

This is a very common mistake in kitchens. If you have a gray refrigerator, a white microwave, a vintage coffee maker, a blue rice cooker, and a black deep fryer, it’ll be difficult for your kitchen to have a defined style.

Therefore, it’s very useful to plan the style and color you want for the space in advance. If you’ve already bought everything, you can put away these objects that don’t match in the drawers so that they don’t become unnecessary distractions.

5. Having too many objects

In the kitchen, you’ll find food, appliances, pots, pans, cutlery, and a long list of utensils that facilitate the preparation of meals. If there are also too many decorative elements, it will become overwhelming to look at this space.

Each place in the house has a function and kitchens should be adequate in such a way that they are practical for cooking. Having pictures, vases, statuettes, plants, objects stuck to the walls and jars everywhere won’t only spoil the decoration, but will also detract from the functionality of the place.

6. A style that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the house

This mistake affects, above all, open kitchens or American-style kitchens that are connected to other spaces in the house, such as the living room or dining room. It’s normal to buy elements for the kitchen little by little, but there’s so much variety that they’re usually purchased in different styles.

The problem with this is that the kitchen elements end up not fitting in with the rest of the decoration of the house. When you have an open kitchen you should think of the different spaces that connect as a whole.

Some tips for decorating the kitchen

Now that you know the mistakes when decorating the kitchen, we’ll tell you about some simple tricks that can help you to have a nice and nice style.

Have enough drawers

If there’s one thing that works well to harmonize a kitchen, it’s having drawers that allow you to organize it properly. Often kitchens that look unpleasant have too many items in plain sight.

If you don’t have enough drawers and you have everything on the countertop, the best thing to do is to build a couple of pieces of furniture to your size.

Take advantage of colors when decorating the kitchen

If your kitchen is small and all the colors of the furniture, floors, and countertops are dark, it’ll look even smaller. It’s important to have a balance of tones and materials. Wood gives elegance and looks great.

A guide from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana explains that ceilings and walls painted in light colors increase the feeling of spaciousness and contribute to the brightness of the room. Reds, oranges, and yellows evoke warmth; white makes you feel order and hygiene; silver, on the other hand, increases the effect of cleanliness.

Optimizing space

You should arrange the kitchen in a way that allows for practicality. You need to place the utensils according to their use. If this isn’t the case, you’ll have to move things every day and this will spoil the decoration.

If there’s a vase or a fruit bowl that you want to highlight, place it where it doesn’t interfere with cooking. You can also clear out your drawers and rearrange them with practical factors in mind.

Turning the disadvantages into advantages

Although it may seem like an impossible task, turning disadvantages into advantages sometimes just requires creativity. If you feel like your kitchen has too many shelves in plain sight and they look cluttered, you can opt to buy glass jars to organize grains and spices.

Likewise, there are different ways to make homemade kitchen shelves without investing a lot of money. You can take advantage of wooden boxes to display fruits and vegetables. Their colors and colorful shapes can give a nice touch to the kitchen if you organize them the right way.

Cleanliness is essential when decorating the kitchen

After knowing the mistakes when decorating the kitchen, it’s important to keep this space clean. A kitchen will never look nice if it’s dirty, no matter if it has the best finishes and the most modern technological systems.

It’s important to clean the oven, stove, and refrigerator very well because those are the ones that accumulate dirt easily.