How We Formed Our Bold, Moody Kitchen Design
Making a Plan
This week, we’re talking about our brooding, intentional, inviting kitchen design. When we moved into our new home, we knew we wanted to make it our own in a big way. But, we also knew we (1) would be stretching those changes over a longer period of time and (2) wanted to feel the space out before we started designing stuff. We made basic essential improvements and moved things around as we finished unpacking, but we left the home generally as-is for a while.
As we started to learn the ins and outs of our new home, we started formulating our whole-home design. I kind of fell into the concept. I’d get an idea for a room, and I’d flesh it out by scouring Pinterest for hours and hoarding inspiration, and then I’d get another idea for a different room and do the same. As I explored inspiration that my husband and I liked, and even prompted him to take “Interior Design Style” quizzes with me to parse out how to combine our different tastes, patterns in our style and preferences started to form.
Research and Brainstorming
At some point, I dug a little deeper into the recommended interior design basics. I read about form, function, color palettes, undertones, color psychology, mood, designing for experience, and I committed to full pre-planning. Clearly, intentionality and thoughtfulness were valuable. I’m a girl who loathes changed plans / waste, so I much preferred the idea of putting in extra effort to get it right the first time, over haphazardly testing to find “right” somewhere down the road.
Eventually, I had brainstormed possible designs, organizational needs, desired moods, and which spaces made the most sense for high vs. low-impact to make an actual plan. I weeded through ideas for each room, choosing a few favorites with my husband, and then juxtaposed those favorites to find which configuration for each room produced the best results overall. I settled on a design just in time for our first projects.
Existing Conditions: How “Good Enough” Equaled “All Wrong”
One of the first spaces we started actually changing was the kitchen.
When we purchased this home, there was a partially open floor plan. The walls and trim were painted just sufficiently enough to look good in listing photos, but there were (are) many awkward lines, unpainted, overpainted, mismatched, and generally poorly crafted spots. The backsplash tile was oversized, heavy tan, with rubber trim. The countertops were a dark mottled pattern round-edge laminate. The cabinets were painted bright white (apparently directly over the original heavily lacquered stain *insert expressionless/straight line mouth emoji*). The appliances were renter-grade models in white, and the hardware/lighting fixtures were a conglomeration of finishes and styles.
The room that dominated the feeling of the house was the kitchen. It’s the one space where all of the good-enough choices piled up into an unavoidable statement. It simply felt like a vacation (or college) rental. Just enough effort and care was put into the space to make it tolerable. For a while. It lacked roots, heart, or character. It invited you to go on your way more than it invited you to linger and seemed to remind you that you didn’t belong. Not at all the feeling I wanted the heart of our home to convey! I wanted a brooding kitchen design, provocative but peaceful, balanced, and inviting. Instead, the kitchen was sterile, disjointed, and transient. So, what about the space caused that?
Mediocrity
For one, the style was just basic. The choice to use white appliances with white cabinetry made a lot of sense to me, especially with the dark flooring and the dark countertops. It’s clean and pretty–and certainly, on-trend for a home listed in 2020. Exactly what you’d want to present to potential buyers. However, it read just like that. When you stood in or looked at this kitchen, you knew it was a rental house fixed up for sale. There was no doubt and no way around it. The style neutrality was mediocre. I hated the basicness of it; I wanted a kitchen design with attitude and character.
Poor Lighting
Two, the single flush mount light was INSUFFICIENT. The very first thing we did when we moved in was install window treatments, because privacy. (Ya girl can’t stand walking by an uncovered window once the sun goes down. Cree-py!) So, all of the gorgeous daylight shown in the photos was lost, except for the occasions when we opened up the blinds. Shadows were a plague, especially on the countertops. Lighting is definitely one of the key components of creating a brooding, balanced, and inviting kitchen design, because it has such a powerful impact setting the tone of the space!
Visual Tension
Third, the visual impact was disjointed and caused subtle tension. The mismatched elements broke up any cohesion, peace, or style that could have been present. Is this modern? Is it rustic? Who can tell? It’s a little of everything and a bunch of nothing.
The overall composition of the space was disjointed, too. I’m not sure what the correct interior design words for this idea are, but to me, it’s like art. Visually, art needs balance, lines of sight, and focal points to create visual harmony and avoid visual tension. The best and properly composed works follow proportional rules of thirds which work with our natural patterns of scanning things we are beholding to lead our eyes through the art.
Composition
Lines of sight move through each depth of the visual space, from the furthest away to the closest, pointing to focal points. The placement of elements of the scene lead you effortlessly through that scene, immersing you in it with peace and ease. Most of the time, our eyes move in a “Z” pattern across a view, whether a screen or a painting, or our perspective on a room. We start top left, cross to top right, slide down to bottom left, and end at bottom right. If we want someone to focus on something, we either strategically place that thing along the lines of sight (Monet’s bridge or the mountain river), or we strategically manipulate the lines of sight to emphasize that thing (tree lined river channel to the bridge).
In our kitchen, there was no focal point. Standing anywhere in the main living area, you see the kitchen. And from 2/3s of those views, the kitchen was a compositional eyesore. There were lines of sight all through the design–trim at the top of the wall, top of the cabinets, backsplash, countertop, top of the half wall–but they were not on happy proportions and led to nowhere. As a result–I felt much happier avoiding looking at it than I did allowing my eyes to fall on it. To design a kitchen that’s brooding but inviting and balanced, I had to change that! I needed visual harmony to bring tranquility and relief, delight and pleasure.
Functionality
Finally, the function was all wrong. We had ample cabinet and countertop space, but to use the kitchen as much as we do, we really wanted more.
Growing up, the kitchen was the heart of our home. My family had a housefire when I was in 5th grade, and when we rebuilt, my parents pretty dramatically redesigned our living area. Pre-housefire, we had a tiny u-shaped kitchen with enough room on the side for a dining table. There was just enough storage to cram essentials in and just enough floor space to open the oven and put something in it. We even had known “no parking zones” where you were NOT allowed to stop and stand, because you would block the one pathway in, out, or through the kitchen. Post-housefire, we had at least 2x as much cabinet and counter space, double-walkways (so no one person could block up the whole house anymore), and a modest but exquisite kitchen island.
It was unimaginably more functional. Now, two people could sit at the island at a time, and hours of meaningful conversation happened there. We’d sit and talk to momma while she prepped food, or the whole family would gather there around the island, talking for hours. And of course, when it came to hosting parties or holidays, both the functional ease and gathering effect continued. My sister and I could help mom prepare multiple dishes while my brother and stepdad did last-minute cleaning. Someone could wash dishes in real time. People could move seamlessly from the entry through the dining room and kitchen to the living room. The kitchen functioned well for its important roles, both day-to-day and on special occasions.
Dysfunctionality
Looking at my little renter kitchen, I knew it would function more like the pre-housefire space than the post-housefire space. For one thing, the dividing wall closed off the kitchen *just enough* to isolate anyone in it but not enough to provide benefits like noise dampening. The wall teased actual use–bar height stools, standing talking and using as a table for drinks–but was too tall and too short for anything practical. In reality, the only thing it was good for was collecting clutter and displaying it front-and-center in our home. Working in the kitchen was not quite cramped, but it was restrictive. Use of any critical access point (sink, oven, dishwasher, fridge, cabinets) took up the floor space in a way that reduced occupants to a single point of ingress/egress. The whole kitchen was a no-parking zone.
New Plan
Instead of restrictive, unwelcoming, and mediocre, I wanted to design our kitchen to be broody, balanced, and inviting. I wanted the room to be full of light, warmth, character, and connection. To draw you in, like the smell of fresh baked cookies, and keep you there like comfy chairs. I needed balanced composition, because I wanted the impact of the room to be peaceful. And I needed to balance coziness with simplicity, statement with space.
Using my typical process–Pinterest, Canva, Stare, Repeat–I created several ideas for the kitchen design. My goal with this process is to find key elements and details, not to mock up an exact rendering. I want to identify what I love and determine if and how it could work.
Right away, I was looking at ways to give the feeling of taller ceilings. We have standard 8 ft ceilings, and if you do it wrong, our space can feel squished. I also was looking for ways simplify the main living area to open it up functionally. I wanted users to be able to move seamlessly through the space and through tasks, so I was looking for barriers to remove. (Literally and figuratively lol).
If I could have one, I wanted an island. I was accustomed to using my mother’s, and in every kitchen I’d used during college, I missed it. I wanted the workspace, the small second sink, the intimate seating, and the big, deep drawers! And, I wanted to hide my trashcans. (It’s absolutely the favorite question I get asked by guests. I almost grin every time I pull out the trashcan drawer “Right here!”) Also, I needed a coffee station and hoped to hide the mini-appliances and fridge-top clutter.
Forming the Design
I had collected many ideas during our home search to help me imagine our lives in each potential home. Most of those were combinations of black, white, and gray cabinets/countertops. I also had a few dark blue and green options. In general, but especially with the location and existing character of this house, I like designs that invoke mountainous environments and moodiness (gray rocks, blue ridges in the distance, rich green forests, warm brown wood, soft gray fog–you get the gist). For the most part, I was sticking to neutrals, planning to use color blocking to suggest more height in the room (dark on the bottom, white on the top).
Then one day, I found a series of kitchen photos from Room for Tuesday showing the most breathtaking deep inky blue cabinets with creamy white tile and exquisitely rich hardwood. *swoon* I was madly in love. Our house–already a moody, inky blue on the outside, was likely going to end up full of similarly moody blues and greens inside. I had already eyeballed a dark emerald and a stormy gray/teal for other rooms, committed to using Tricorn Black (which has green and blue undertones) as much as feasible, and selected a warm gray with green/blue undertones for the walls in the whole main living area.
Perfect Brooding Kitchen Design Inspiration: Dark Blue Cabinets
Sarah at Room for Tuesday has a very different design style than I do. (And clearly, actual expertise.) I would call my style rustic transitional, and hers seems to be a more sophisticated type of transitional. More modern and European. Her design really is something you’d expect to find in a designer magazine. There is such elegance to it, effortless, authentic gracefulness.
The difference feels stark enough, I hate to even suggest comparison. But I’m aiming for the effortless, graceful, elegant side of rustic. I think that’s where the captivating feeling comes from. That deep drawing invitation to sink into a place and soak it up. That delightful opportunity to let your soul breathe.
For me, those stunning teal cabinets were it. Once I saw Sarah’s photos, all I wanted was to figure out how I could possibly pull that much of a statement off. You HAVE to check out her design here (Our Dark & Moody Kitchen Reveal) and her post on designing dark cabinetry (My Top Paint Color Picks for Dark Kitchen Cabinets). Seriously–if I’d only read that post when I found the photos, I would have never doubted. Her cabinets are actually more navy with gray, but on my screens, the color reads with more green in it. She used floor to ceiling cabinets with matching crown moulding and toekicks paired with crisp white ceilings and full wall white subway tiles. They’re not just any subway tile though–they are perfectly proportioned textured milky white with subtle hints of gray subway tiles.
My Kitchen Design
I decided to start with a more teal color, using the same floor-to-ceiling-plus-moulding style with a bright backsplash tile. For most of the day, my smaller kitchen window lets in sunlight, but with good blinds and dark flooring, the house can feel very cavernous. So, I looked for white – light gray tile and countertops. After much mood-board comparison, I decided on white tile with Fantasy Gray quartz counters. To further increase the reflection of available light, I chose stainless steel appliances, sinks, and faucets, and I double-checked my selected gray. I had considered an entire range of Sherwin Williams grays, including noticeably darker colors like Comfort Gray (SW6205) or Pussywillow (SW 7643), but I settled on Aloof Gray (SW 6197) in the end. The “light, cool hue” and its “calm and refreshing mood” was exactly what I needed.
In the name of brightening, I chose white for the kitchen island. The internet reassured me that having a contrasting island was a great design choice, and the mood boards confirmed it. We generally wanted to use oil rubbed bronze to black or stainless steel metal finishes through the entire house, so I chose oiled bronze hardware and light fixtures.
Balanced, Brooding, Inviting, and DIY
Finally, I had a breathtaking, intentional, custom design. All I’d have to do to bring it to life was tear out the half wall, tear down the beige backsplash, replace all the appliances, add upper cabinets and a pantry, install an island, buy countertops, plumb a new sink (and pot filler–husband’s request), install 3x as much lighting, repair the ceiling texture, replace the flawed trim, retile the backsplash, and paint. No sweat, haha!
It’s a lot of work. Certainly, this is the biggest project I’ve ever attempted. However, with my husband’s experience and my (limited, definitely limited) skills, I was confident we could figure it out. We weren’t financially or emotionally prepared to do the full reno at once, so we planned to tackle one step at a time. Which is exactly how I’ll tell you all about it here. 🙂
Come back in a couple weeks to read about ripping out that half wall and DIYing a kitchen island!