A Stove Cove Is The Stylish Way To House Your Kitchen Appliances

For the reno-obsessed homeowner who never goes a day without adding to their Pinterest board, the kitchen is a minefield of potential design and decor options. There are the big-ticket upgrades, like replacing counters with a sleek stylish slab of granite or quartz or updating your kitchen cabinets, all the way to budget-and-renter-friendly tweaks, like smart organizational hacks or adding lighting. One option you perhaps haven't yet considered, though, is outfitting your kitchen with a stove cove — a design choice that adds instant coziness and a certain old-world, storybook je ne sais quoi. 

Simply put, a stove cove is a structural build-out of three walls that house the kitchen stove in a nook. Often, the cove will be finished out with a tile backsplash surround, which makes the standard appliance feel like more of a standalone focal point of the room. This design choice, also called a cook's nook, is certainly no easy weekend project, but it is a vintage kitchen trend we can't wait to see come back — bringing European cottage vibes to an otherwise standard kitchen. 

A stove cove can also provide functional benefits. Extra storage and shelving are often incorporated into the design, such as racks to hang spoons and cooking utensils, or shelves for spices. The recessed, walled-off look can also help insulate and hold in warmth, smells, and noises — and in olden days, smoke — from the stove and vent, while adding visual interest and character to the room.

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the cooktop is certainly, in turn, the heart of the kitchen, so it only makes sense to draw extra emphasis to the feature with this architectural detail. Long before modern kitchens, with their sleek counters, built-in cabinetry, and modern appliances, kitchens of the past were naturally centered around the heat source — whether it was a range, wood-burning stove, or rustic fireplace. In historical kitchens, the heat source took center stage, while tables, cupboards, and workstations were scattered around as functional pieces of furniture to hold food and cookware. (This would change around the 1920s and '30s with the rise of the modern integrated, continuous style of cabinet.) 

By adding a stove cove, modern cooks take a page from the designs of kitchens past, making this choice especially suited to kitchens with a rustic, traditional, farmhouse, or historic aesthetic. Those going for a more minimalistic, sleek look might want to pass, as might homeowners who aren't in the market for a major structural upgrade. If you love the look, the stove cove choice is surprisingly versatile depending on your choice of surrounding molding, balustrades, tile, stones, paint colors, and the style of stove it surrounds. So whether your intended look is more rustic farmhouse, English cottage, or French chateau, the cook's nook is the perfect addition to level up your kitchen design.