Kitchen designs differ from country to country, so why not incorporate some international kitchen design ideas into your home?
The climate 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 endure 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, kitchen design can reflect this lifestyle. It may be that ensuring good ventilation to maintain a cool atmosphere indoors becomes your main concern, and of course efficient refrigeration will be vital for perishable food to be safely stored. The choice of light furniture that can be easily moved to the garden or to the porch, patio or terrace is another practical aspect to consider; it is usually made of woven reed or light wood.
If it’s very hot outside, you may prefer to create a kitchen that is also visually cool, coming up with a pale, calming color scheme. Use flat matte shades of blue and gray with pale painted walls and try to avoid complicated patterns that would disturb the feeling of calm. However, it is worth remembering that these decorative schemes need a lot of bright, clear 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 blend with that white. These shades of baked terracotta, natural sandstone, and dusty pink also provide warmth in winters, which are often very cold. Of course, you can get inspiration and decorative ideas from holidays abroad, but transporting the style from one country to another can be completely disastrous – colors that look stunning in sunlight can be oppressive unless you can reproduce one. similar light, by natural or artificial means. .
Thick wooden shutters on the windows, or canvas canopies, work not only to provide shade in the summer, but also to ward off freezing winds. Stone or tile floors are pleasantly cool in the summer and can be heated with rugs or carpets if needed, and you may have a door that opens directly from the kitchen to the garden that can be left open permanently in good weather. to allow cooling. breeze to refresh the kitchen. But cool breezes turn to icy drafts in winter, so you’ll probably need waterproofing, perhaps with a warm, colorful drape. And flexible yet reliable heating that can respond quickly to weather changes is a modern convenience that almost everyone would consider essential.
Obviously, it’s sensible to wait a year before making major design decisions, unless you’re really sure you can anticipate seasonal weather changes. The royal style is definitely more than superficial.