Give Your Boring Kitchen Countertops Some Life With This Lovely Styling Tip

For those looking to make kitchen upgrades without any renovations, curating a vignette is the perfect styling solution. This kitchen decor technique is simple and easy to achieve, and odds are that you've already developed your own version of this trick without even meaning to. This strategically selected series of common household artifacts is a way of putting objects you already have to good use without needing to commit to any permanent adjustments. Vignettes also take many ever-changing forms, making use of floral arrangements, kitchen utensils, coffee tools, lighting fixtures, and other unassuming kitchen items.

There are many directions one could take their interior design, including contemporary, farmhouse, or more brutalist themes, just to name a few. In order to adequately translate this into a vignette, you'd want to include relevant components based on theme. For example, you may opt for minimalist vases and raw material decorative bowls to coincide with brutalist interiors or wood decorations and lived-in fabrics to meet those farmhouse inspirations. 

The direction you choose to take your kitchen vignette is, of course, customizable depending upon one's personal style and expression, usually going alongside the inspiration of one's wider home decor. That said, the vignette will commonly coincide with the current buildout or theme, and it often can include objects you may have tucked away that could be of better decorative use than you realize. 

Vignettes can also make use of upcycled elements, such as bowls with minor cracks or disused kitchen appliances, that can be combined together to create visually stunning additions to barren counter space. For those on the other side of this, who are wary of making an already small kitchen space even tighter with cluttered counters — opt for vignettes that are as practical as they are visually interesting. For example, a mug display that also houses petite plants or flowers alongside it creates an interesting addition that doesn't exclusively serve a decorative purpose. 

The same goes for cutting boards and accompanying utensil containers, daily use elements that may well be curated to look as interesting as they are practical. And if you want to keep your cookbooks off the counter for fear of food or water damage, you could turn your cookbooks into stylish decor instead, including them in your vignette's styling. To center your design, your vignette could include framed images or decorative dishes hung up on the walls. Get creative with items that would otherwise live on the fridge or elsewhere in the kitchen.

If you're worried about a loss of functional meal prep space, you could make use of various wall-mounted frames or flower displays to add to your vignette while conserving your use of the countertop. There are also many ways to open up an otherwise small-feeling kitchen, such as considering natural lighting and the best-suited paint colors depending on your house's orientation. Your kitchen, though primarily a place of nourishment, could also quickly become a decorative haven with the help of this vignette technique.