Today’s Long Island kitchens are more than just places to prepare meals and wash dishes. Your kitchen is a gathering spot where you entertain friends and spend quality time with your family. A few key home improvements can make your kitchen more inviting and can make the hard-working room perform better too. If you’re looking for simple ways to improve your kitchen on a budget, try some of these easy and affordable kitchen upgrades.
1. Coordinate Color Schemes
A fresh coat of paint can do a world of good when it comes to improve your kitchen and give it a coordinated look. Matching kitchen wall and ceiling colors with those in adjacent rooms will help give your entire home a feeling of cohesion. Don’t hesitate to add visual interest with a few dashes of contrasting color too. Options to consider include painting the backs of glass-door cabinets or shelving in a brighter shade. When choosing accent colors, take your cue from those used in other areas of your home.
2. Make a Decorative Splash
The wall space between kitchen countertops and the upper cabinets known as the backsplash offers you the opportunity to make a big design statement for a small investment. If you’re handy with a trowel and mortar, durable and easy-to-maintain ceramic, stone or glass tiles are great choices for backsplash materials. Peel-and-stick backsplash tiles are inexpensive and easier-to-apply alternatives. While not as long-lasting as tiles applied with mortar, they’ll give an instant boost to your kitchen’s decorative style.
3. Light It Up
Few design elements affect the mood and functionality of your kitchen more than lighting. Undercabinet lighting lets you prepare meals without standing in your own shadow. You can brighten your countertops instantly with battery-powered puck lighting. If you’d like extra illumination for critical cooking tasks but installing recessed lighting is out of the question, consider replacing your generic overhead fixture with an affordable spotlight fixture. Some models come with several spots that let you direct beams of light to different areas of the room.
4. Swap Out the Hardware
One of the easiest and most affordable ways to give your kitchen a facelift is to replace the knobs, hinges, drawer pulls and even electric switch plates with new hardware. Match the finish with your faucets, lighting fixtures and appliances for a unified look. You can also give your current brass hardware an Old World look by rubbing them with a darkening or antiquing solution. Look for ways to add coordinating hardware in other areas of your kitchen too. Install metallic corbels under a breakfast bar, a matching curtain rod for the kitchen window and a row of metal hooks for towels and measuring cups.
5. Organize Clutter
It’s never been easier to add organizers to drawers and cabinets to help manage kitchen clutter. From oversized drawers that slide out from base cabinets to pop-up shelves for small appliances, you’ll find an array of DIY kits designed to work with standard cabinet sizes and proportions. Many can be installed with basic hand tools. Simple tray inserts offer you more options than ever before as well. Look for organizers with cutouts that make it easy for anyone in the family to put the right piece of cutlery in the right spot.
You don’t need to spend a bundle to make the place where everyone gathers a more stylish and better-working space. Sometimes, a few small expenditures can make a big difference. For larger overhauls, you may need to call in the pros. If implementing these easy tips just isn’t enough to improve the look and functionality of your kitchen, contact NDA Kitchens for a free consultation to get a stylish new kitchen and enhance the heart of your Long Island home.
