Creating Your Own French Kitchen the Easy Way

One of the most charming styles of kitchen is the French chateau kitchen. It is not only the delicious cuisine that comes out of the kitchen, but also the Old World warmth of its design, with its wooden and iron look. The typical French kitchen suggests history, charm, warmth, and good food.

Of course, you don’t need to move to France or into a chateau to create your own French kitchen. You can take various aspects of this unique, charming design and bring it into your home. With a little creativity, your kitchen can contain a lot of the beauty and natural design that you would normally find in a home on the banks of the River Loire.

Let’s take a look at what you can do:

- One of the features of the French kitchen is its freestanding wooden furniture, such as a wooden table, a cupboard, a baker’s rack. These can be easily fitted into your kitchen. Wood always looks beautiful, and wooden chopping boards are also extremely practical. You will always find wooden cheese and chopping boards in any French kitchen.

- Stone is an integral part of a French kitchen. In a genuine Mediterranean home, you are bound to find a stone fire place and stone flooring like flagstones on the kitchen floor. You may not be so fortunate in your own home, so you could fit a stone arch or border along the wall to give a more authentic touch to your kitchen.

- Put down beautiful area rugs to blend in with the colors of the kitchen and give it a certain softness. The typical colors for a French kitchen vary from gold, red, and rust, to lavender, green, and blue. For this reason, a floral rug may look good, or you may want a yellow rug in order to blend in. Alternatively, you may want something simpler, such as a plain wool or cotton rug.

- A typical feature of the French kitchen is to store pots and pans by hanging them from nails on the wall, along with china plates. You can do this also. It looks very quaint and cute, but it is also a practical way of storing these items and having them close to hand.

- Keep the walls a pale plaster color, with an uneven, authentic texture. This is often complemented by dark wooden beams.

- For tablecloths, curtains, and other fabrics, choose traditional French designs. For example, you may like a Provencal print, which contains primary colors blended with green, lavender, and bright orange, or you may prefer toile, with a white, cream, or yellow background, contrasted with a stronger color such as dark blue, black, red, or green.

- Bring nature into the kitchen with traditional French pottery and ceramic vases containing fresh geraniums and lavender. Line the kitchen windowsill with French herbs. Hanging baskets with fresh flowers also add to the look.

- This blend of nature, rusticity, and simplicity will make your kitchen look and feel like a very special place, full of atmosphere, like any French chateau kitchen.