The Perfect Pieces To Style Your Kitchen
The kitchen, more than any other room, gets dressed in layers. Below, our considered guide to the five pieces we'd reach for first — the art, the easel, the vase, the bowl, and a little greenery used sparingly.
A piece of art, propped not hung
There’s a particular pleasure in leaning a piece of art against the wall rather than committing it to a hook. It looks unfussy — like you might move it next week, or you might not — and it lets a kitchen breathe in a way that a perfectly hung gallery wall sometimes can’t.
A botanical print works especially well in a kitchen: living things, on paper, near other living things. Choose something with quiet colour rather than a loud statement, and it will sit beautifully alongside whatever you cook, eat, and pour beside it.
Art
A vase, kept simple
A kitchen vase doesn’t need to be a statement. In fact, it’s usually better when it isn’t. A single ceramic or glass vase on the counter, holding one type of stem — eucalyptus, olive branches, a handful of dahlias from the garden in summer — does more for a room than a full bouquet ever could.
Choose a shape you’d happily look at empty, and you’ll never feel the pressure to keep it full.
Vases & Pots
A footed bowl, left out
There’s something about a bowl raised slightly off the surface that changes the energy of a kitchen counter. A footed bowl asks to be filled — with lemons, with pears, with a few stems of rosemary — and rewards the small effort with a vignette that looks considered without trying to.
Our Striped Footed Terracotta Bowl has earned its place; the Tuscan Rustic Terracotta is its rounder, warmer cousin. Either works.
Bowls & Dishes
A little faux greenery, used sparingly
We’re cautious about faux greenery — it’s the difference between considered and catalogued. Used well, it’s wonderful: a single stem in a vase, a sprig of olive trailing from a footed bowl, one trailing plant on a high shelf where real plants would struggle.
Used badly, it overwhelms. The rule we tend to follow: if you can imagine cutting it from a real plant, it works. If you can’t, it doesn’t.
Greenery
