7 Homes That’ll Inspire You to Move Your Favorite Artwork into Your Kitchen

Displaying art is a unique way to add character to your home and really let your personality shine through on your walls and tabletop-like surfaces. Whether you decide to go the affordable route and buy a mass-produced print or you take your time curating a custom piece or searching for the perfect, one-of-a-kind vintage painting, every room of a home can benefit from artwork — and that includes your kitchen! 

One quick thing to keep in mind here: For best results, don’t hang anything near an open flame or place an heirloom piece close to a spot where you do a lot of messy prep work. You want your art to delight for years to come, not deteriorate. Once you see what artwork looks like in the overall design of these seven kitchens, I promise you’ll be inspired to add a piece to your own. Let these examples guide you in what type of piece you pick and where you choose to place it.

Agathe Corbet lives in a 550-square-foot one-bedroom apartment in Nantes, France, with her husband, Jeremy. They originally purchased the home in 2018 as an investment property but then moved in themselves three years later. “We never imagined living in it ourselves!” Corbet says in her house tour. Eventually, the couple was able to make the space their own by renovating the entire place, and one area they gave a lot of design consideration to was the kitchen. In addition to all new appliances and cabinetry, the Corbets also installed a gorgeous set of natural open wood shelves in a little corner niche. Each shelf is filled with stylish, neutral decor, including a framed piece of abstract art. “My style is timeless, warm, and minimalist, but never sterile,” Corbet says. “Earthy color palettes, natural materials, and organic shapes are all parts of my signature aesthetics.​” 

Chloé Sucrée transformed her 1900-square-foot childhood home in Barcelona, Spain, into a playful modern haven for herself and her children. Filled with art, restored furniture, and pops of color set against a backdrop of white walls, each room in Sucrée’s home is unique in its own way. “My ideal color palette is neutral so I can add touches of strong colors,” she says in her house tour, and that’s exactly what she did in her kitchen — with artwork in particular. To create a cool focal point in her otherwise neutral cook space, she hung three vibrant prints on the white tiled walls above the sink area. She even used the frame of the largest piece to layer in smaller pieces of art.

Sophie and Marco live in a colorful, quirky 980-square-foot Victorian terraced house in South London, England, with their daughter, Misty. Everywhere you look in their house, you’ll find something eye-catching, and that’s just the way Sophie intended it. “It’s all quite theatrical in here,” she says in her house tour. “Note the pink tinsel and jellyfish hanging from the kitchen ceiling.” The colorful artwork and neon light combo hanging above the stove provides another unique touch in this family kitchen. Pairing a martini print with a squiggly glowing light gives the space a fun, almost bar- or restaurant-like feel.

Isabel Warren-Lynch lives in a 700-square-foot co-op in New York City that’s very bright and traditional in design style. “Fresh, well-lit white walls are the backdrop,” Warren-Lynch says in her house tour. When decorating, she’s most inspired by her extensive art collection, and she’s found a way to incorporate a piece in every space in her home. Take her kitchen, for example: Instead of hanging prints, she simply placed a few leaning against the wall and fridge, which feels like a nice extension of her calm, laid-back style. Choosing shiny gold frames for those pieces lends her all-white kitchen an extra touch of sophistication. 

Bree Dunbar lives in a 560-square-foot one-bedroom apartment in Melbourne, Australia, with her 9-year-old daughter. Before moving into the apartment, Dunbar spent about $15,000 “freshening up the place” by painting, re-carpeting the floors, switching out light fixtures, and updating the kitchen. While the entire home is pretty bright and decorated with light colors and wood furniture, the kitchen strikes more of a moody note with a black backsplash and deep-colored countertops to match. “One of my best tips is to have at least one significant vintage piece in each area of your home, including the bathroom and kitchen,” Dunbar says. Following her own advice, she hung a secondhand watercolor painting of a French market, which she found on eBay, right above her sink. In the absence of a window, this gives her something nice to look at as she rinses dishes off. 

Caroline Mullen lives in a beautiful, vintage-inspired 750-square-foot apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey, that’s full of clever DIY projects and smaller-space ideas. This shelf setup might be one of her finest storage moments. With a few shallow shelves and a magnetic strip, she’s able to take advantage of vertical wall space in her kitchen to keep large knives, cooking utensils, and even a few bowls always available but still organized. What’s more, this smart storage solution has freed up a little bit of countertop space, which Mullen chose to decorate with — you guessed it! — a framed piece of art (as well as a lamp, both of which were thrifted). “Paint and tons of decor went a long way towards making the space our own,” Mullen says, and her kitchen is a perfect example of that. 

With her countertop space limited and her walls already occupied with cabinetry and a DIY spice rack, Small/Cool designer and DIY extraordinaire Sourya Venumbaka chose to display art right on her 600-square foot Philadelphia apartment’s refrigerator. Treating the front of the appliance like a stretch of blank wall space, she mounted a framed painting as though it were an oversized magnet. The result? A pretty focal point that can hold its own next to a graphic black-and-white backsplash and a dozen or so of colorful spices.