The room in which you prepare meals and wash dishes is rarely considered one of those that within which you’re also able to let your creative juices flow – the kitchen is all too often seen merely as a functional room. Perhaps as a creative, you prefer to practice your art in the living room, in your bedroom, in a private study or even outside amongst nature. Whatever your creative tendencies, here are some neat tips for transforming the kitchen into a hub of inspiration and creative energy that won’t compromise on its ordinary functionality.
Change the Lighting
As most creatives will agree, there’s something about lighting and ambiance that can get you into the correct flow for producing art. The stark sanitized white light of the kitchen is not especially useful in the regard, so it’s going to be your first port of call to tamper with your lighting in order to have a little more control over how the interior of your kitchen feels; you’re aiming for a warm cosiness as opposed to a bright and cool look.
Having the ability to dim the lighting with a dimmer knob will enable you to nail the exact level of lighting for the mood you’re looking to establish, while having the right set of blinds or curtains over your windows will allow natural warm daylight to pour in, or for you to shut out the night for quiet evenings sat with your materials in an intimate and familiar environment.
Value Comfort and Coziness
As with cruel white lighting, traditional kitchen design tends to be all about hard surfaces, sharp edges, and a general interior architecture that’s uninviting and slightly hostile. This isn’t to say the counters and surfaces of granite or wood in a kitchen should be ripped up and replaced – they’re important for the functioning of your kitchen. But if you have enough space to do so, it’s time to add some softer elements to the room.
Dependent on how you’d like your kitchen to look after its creative make-over, you’ll be able to choose from fabric wall hangings or thick and colorful rugs that add warmth to the room; deep-sinking sofas or indulgent bean bags for those times you want to relax; or simply some plush cushions or a nice desk chair to put at the end of the kitchen table for you to use when you’re feeling the creative energies come a little more to the fore.
Build in Your Creative Inspiration
Everyone’s got a different form of inspiration that guides them to a place in which they can really concentrate on their art, entering a state of ‘flow’ that is enabled by their surrounds, and it’s up to you to add some of these motivational symbols to your kitchen so that you’re encompassed by those things that make you engaged in the art form that you practice. There might be a corner of your kitchen that you’re planning on making extra-inspirational, or you may plan on decking the whole room out with art and images – the choice is yours.
To give some examples of items that can change the overall feel of a room – especially of a kitchen, which you’re on your way to converting into a multi-purpose room – there’s incense sticks to change the room’s smell, soft surfaces that’ll soften the room’s acoustics, and colorful images, paintings, tablecloths and curtains that will all make your kitchen into a room that you feel settled and comfortable in.
Enhance Your Kitchen’s Facilities
On top of adding in your artistic tokens to your kitchen, you should also see your kitchen as a space to work when you’re using it to be creative, but as something to utilize to make your life easier. Perhaps you’re tired of carrying a mug of coffee up a flight of stairs every time you want a coffee buzz, or you find yourself peckish when on inspirational walks in nature; when working in the kitchen, you’re at the epicenter of food and drink production – something well worth taking advantage of!
On warm summer days, having the fridge close at hand with its ice-cold beverages is one thing, but having a nice and simple ice dispenser – you can find out more here – will keep your temperature level when sat in your kitchen. Perhaps adding an espresso machine will inspire you to more art more of the time, or indeed any other facility that you’ve long wanted to add to your kitchen – even just storage solutions to make more of the space that your kitchen provides so that there’s more room to produce fabulous art.
Make it a Social Space
You may have a family, ore may live with a partner, with friends, or on your own. In any case, the kitchen can often be the hub of socialization within a household. By making your kitchen more of an attractive room for people to relax in, it will transform the energy in the room into one of open and comfortable relaxation.
You may have already added new seating in the form of a couch, some beanbags, or just some warm and fluffy cushions that can be propped against a wall by guests looking to stake out a corner of your kitchen with a glass of wine. In any case, try and make the kitchen into your hub of friendly chat, where you gather your nearest and dearest. Doing so will mean that when you’re alone there, you’ll have invested the room with warm and happy memories that you’re able to tap into when you get out you brush, pen, tools or laptop. These moments and the memories attached to a room – shouldn’t be underestimated as they can really inspire you in times of boredom.
The kitchen is not ordinarily the space in which you’d consider practicing your art. But if you have enough space and you’re willing to make some astute improvements to your kitchen’s interior, you’ll find it’s a wonderfully practical and versatile place in which to fine-tune creative juices, becoming something of a creative hub for those who love to make art.