Kitchen designs differ from country to country, so why not incorporate some international kitchen design ideas into your home?
The weather has a great influence on the way we live. Homes in climates that are consistently hot are built in a completely different way than those that have to withstand dramatic changes from season to season.
In a country where for most of the year food is cooked on an outdoor barbecue and meals are eaten outdoors, the kitchen design can reflect this lifestyle. It may be that ensuring you have good ventilation to keep a cool atmosphere indoors becomes your main concern, and of course efficient refrigeration will be vital if perishable foods are to be stored safely. The choice of light furniture that can be easily moved to the garden, the porch, the patio or the terrace is another practical aspect to take into account; it is usually made of woven cane or light wood.
If it’s really hot outside, you may prefer to create a kitchen that’s also visually cool by coming up with a calming, pale color scheme. Use flat, matte shades of blue and gray with pale painted walls and try to avoid intricate patterns that disturb the sense of calm. However, it is worth remembering that these decorative schemes need a lot of clear, bright light, or their coldness tends to become clinical and unwelcoming.
The enduring appeal of the white villages of rural southern Spain, Provence, and Tuscany is due in part to the other colors, drawn from the surrounding countryside, that are combined with that white. These baked terracotta, natural sandstone, and dusty pink tones also add warmth in winters, which are often very cold. Sure, you can get inspiration and decorating ideas from vacations abroad, but transporting style from one country to another can be downright disastrous: colors that look sensational in the sun can be oppressive unless you can reproduce similar lighting. , by natural or artificial means. .
Thick wooden shutters on the windows, or canvas awnings, work not only to provide shade in the summer, but also to ward off icy winds. The stone or tiled floors are pleasantly cool in the summer and can be warmed with mats or rugs if required AND you can have a door opening directly from the kitchen into the garden which can be left open permanently in good weather to allow let it cool breeze to refresh the kitchen. But cool breezes turn to icy drafts in winter, so you’ll probably need to waterproof it, perhaps with a warm, colorful curtain. And flexible yet reliable heating that can respond quickly to changes in the weather is a modern convenience that almost everyone would consider essential.
Obviously, it’s sensible to wait a year before making any major design decisions, unless you’re really sure you can anticipate any seasonal climate change. The royal style is definitely more than a deep surface.
