This Simple Trick Is Perfect for Adding Architectural Detail to Your Home—and It Starts in the Kitchen
Here are unexpected ways to use this kitchen detail.
You clearly wouldn’t show a spatula in the living room, and the proper place for a microwave is somewhere close to the area. But what about installing kitchen shelves around your kitchen space? Increasingly, designers are using this “kitchen best” element in unusual ways throughout the house as an abrupt way to infuse architectural texture.
“Kitchen cabinets are this kind of powerful architectural option due to the fact that they take up so much visual actual property in a room,” says interior dresser Lindsay Lucas. “The door profile, inset details, panels, size, hardware, equipment integration, or even the way cabinets meet the ceiling, ground, or nearby partitions can absolutely trade how architecturally a space feels.”
Putting kitchen cabinets everywhere besides the kitchen may sound unusual, but it really works particularly nicely. The front proportionally designs its best suggestions and ideas for this structure-infusing feat.
Tips for Using Cabinetry Beyond the Kitchen
Our 2021 Whole Home featured an ambitious yet sophisticated media room, designed with the help of French & French, that featured lattice-covered shelving.
Integrating kitchen cabinetry into the relaxation of your own home requires some nuance. To keep cabinets from looking out of place, the secret is to treat them more like decor or furnishings.
“That can mean using recessed construction, extra refined door profiles, integrated stop panels, furniture-style legs, arched openings, concealed garages or hardware that feels appropriate to the room,” says Lucas. “I also want to be very conscious of sharing. Whether something is used in a living room, hallway, mudroom or dining area, it should no longer feel like it’s being pulled right out of the kitchen setup.”
Interior designer Rainey Richardson also points to replacing the front panels for something extra architecturally exciting. “A lot of people make the mistake of using the same cabinet face in multiple rooms: dining room, kitchen, mudroom,” she says. “Because the beds reveal the heart content to each variety, they assume the shelves need to be wholesome, however, the opposite is authentic.”
Another simple way to remodel cabinets is with new hardware. Play with scale through the use of significantly oversized hardware or decidedly small hardware. Metal, stone, wood, acrylic, and glass provide a seemingly limitless opportunity for possibilities and combinations.
7 Unexpected Ways to Use Kitchen Cabinets in Your Home
From the entryway to the bathroom, get inspired by these unconventional uses for kitchen cabinets.
Formal Sitting Room
In this formal living room, designed with the help of Richardson, the kitchen cabinets completely overhaul the space. For added architectural interest, her group combined plain front shelves with fretwork and glass doors.
Entry Chest
Lindsay Laine Home
In this arched wallpapered area of interest close to the entrance, cabinets create an architectural moment out of what could be a simple wall.
“The arched shape, paneled drawer fronts, brass hardware, and mirror all work together so the cabinetry feels integrated into the room rather than added as a storage piece,” Lucas tells us.
Mudroom
Kitchen cabinets work brilliantly in a real mudroom, as well as properly. Here, interior designer Kelsey Kline Haywood from Interiors ordered a bench with tall cabinets. Plus, the geometric details give them more edge.
She says, “A brass grill insert adds texture to the door and is a way to conceal without using a full cabinet panel.” She also loves this look of a library.
Banquette Dining
Lindsay Laine Home
In the above room, also designed by Lucas, the cabinet extends beyond the walk-in kitchen and becomes part of the dining room.
“The island folds right into a built-in banquette with paneled and reed detailing, so the seating feels connected to the kitchen architecture instead of being treated as unattached furnishings,” says Lucas. It additionally adds characteristic through hidden storage..
Billiard Room
Julie Soefer Photography / Rainey Richardson
This circle of the relative’s garage door opens up numerous headrooms within the residence, so Richardson decided to borrow the kitchen cabinetry. To make it feel less “kitchen cabinet” and more of an architectural anchor, she added unusual trim work, hardware and paint colors.
Bathroom
847 Collective / Kline Interiors
Don’t write off the top cabinets in the toilet. In this assignment via Kline Interiors, good wood shelves are paired with red glass cabinet panels. A manage instantly transforms them into a tangible piece that feels the love it belongs to.
Haywood says, “A grooved door profile on a media cabinet or bar offers a strong architectural line that feels like a floating piece of furniture, now not cabinets.”
Bay Window Seating
Lindsay Laine Home
This window seat is a great example of the closet becoming a softer, larger living architectural feature. It is also a clever use of the area.
Lucas says, “It adds storage, seats with custom cushioning and attraction, even like making windowed experience designed in place of leftovers.”