This black and white kitchen is part of a new project we have recently started work on. I’m very excited to introduce this bright and airy home of a very sweet family. And since they say that the kitchen is the heart of the home, that’s where we will start.
The home we’re designing is a big and beautiful 3 bedroom apartment with large windows that let in lots of light and fresh air. We’re aiming to keep that light and airy look in our interiors too, which means using lots of whites and pastels. And the same applies to the kitchen.
But we’ll get to the colours later. As always, let us start with the plan.
Plan:
This is the existing plan of the kitchen, and we’re not changing it. The reason being that the counters are already in place and we don’t want to break them.
This is what the kitchen looks like right now.
There is a perfectly good black kitchen counter… and that’s where the good ends. The cabinets and drawers are breathing their last and we will replace these with new ones.
The backsplash is only a 2 foot band above the counter. As you can see, the walls are already dirty. It’s the reason we usually tile the kitchen all the way… so that the dust, smoke, oil and food stains and marks left by dirty hands can all be cleaned with a quick wipe.
So this backsplash will have to go, and we’ll replace it with a tile that goes on all the kitchen walls.
A Black and White Kitchen:
And that’s how we narrowed it down to a black and white kitchen. The black counters are already there. If we want to keep it ‘white and light’ then white is the best option for tiles and cabinets in the kitchen. (As opposed to pastels).
The first thing we had to think about was the backsplash. When we decided to go white with the tiles, this image from our post on ‘Kitchen Backsplash Ideas‘ came into mind immediately. I have always loved that herringbone pattern. I thought the black grout with white tiles was an added bonus as it would go perfectly well with our black and white kitchen.
We also found some beautiful images on Pinterest that really inspired us. I love these subway tiles placed vertically instead of horizontally. It can’t get simpler than that.. and it’s yet so pretty.
We could also go fancier, for instance, with a beautifully grained marble like this one.
I even went looking for white tiles and found some beautiful textures we could use.
We all LOVED this tile and almost finalised it.
But we kept coming back to the herringbone pattern and finally that’s what we’re going ahead with.
Accesorise With Black:
So that is how we’re building our black and white kitchen. We have black counters with white cabinets. We have white tiles with black grouting. And we would love to bring in a bit of black bling with accessories such as handles and faucets. This pic is exactly what we have in mind.
By experience I know that getting from inspiration pics to final product is a bit like Chinese Whispers. You pick up different inspiration ideas from different pics and add your own little twist to it. You picture a particular product in your head and when you go searching in the market you may not find the exact thing, but something similar. And all these little differences add up to the end result being different from the picture you first had in mind… and a design that is unique to you.
I’m looking forward to see how this one will end up. Sign up here for updates to make sure you don’t miss it either!
(Want to know how this kitchen turned out? The full reveal is now on blog. Click here to see)
Until next time,
Quite impressive.