How To Transform Your Kitchen With Texture

published Sep 13, 2015

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It might be a little weird to add knit throws into a kitchen, but adding texture to this space can still be easy. In fact, there are a lot of ways to play around with the element of texture in your cooking space that will add to the look and enrich the feel of this room.

If you’re starting from scratch or remodeling:

(Image credit: Chris Perez)

Materials

Rough beams, wood counters and cabinets, floors with distressed materials —if you want a lot of texture in a kitchen and you’re starting from scratch or remodeling, start with your materials. Using materials with rough, natural or distressed finishes will infuse the whole space with a lot of character and allow you to create a space where you don’t have to fill it up with a lot of stuff.

Better your backsplash

Even if you don’t have the money, energy or desire to upgrade the large surfaces of your home to have a lot of texture, you can still make quite the texture splash in your kitchen with a backsplash. From natural stone to patterned tin to a lot of small tiles, the backsplash can really set the textured tone in this space.

→ Kitchen Inspiration: 10 Tile Backsplashes That Totally Steal the Show
→ 15 Ideas for Removable, DIY Kitchen Backsplashes

If you’ve got to work with what you’ve got:

Add texture when you add extra storage

If you plan on adding more storage in your kitchen, consider baskets, which naturally come with a strong texture. Particularly if placed in a prominent location or found in a very small kitchen, even just a few baskets of extra storage can elevate a kitchen’s look with texture.

→ Best Baskets: Muuto, Gildem, Arro & 6 More

(Image credit: Nancy Mitchell)

Art and framed visual textures

Like in other rooms of the house, you can take photos (or purchase prints) of close-ups of textures — crumbling brick walls, rusted metal — and frame to add to your kitchen. It’s faking it, but it’s surprisingly effective at feeling like there’s texture in your kitchen.

(Image credit: Jaime Kowal)

Rough-cut accessories

If you don’t have the ability to add the kind of large surface materials you’d like in your kitchen, you can still add things like hanging shelves, cutting boards, trays and other accessories made out of rough or live-edge wood, which will add a lot of texture and earthiness to your kitchen.

→ DIY Shelves: 5 Sleek DIY Shelf Storage Projects Under $50