You might not be up for painting all of your kitchen cabinets. Island design allows you to get a fresh new look or add in more storage space. You don’t have to match it with your existing cabinetry. However, this does take up a lot of floor space in your room so you need to make sure that you pay attention to scale.
Shape is another important consideration for these pieces. If you’re going with a dresser you can find one with a bow front to it. This adds a subtle circular shape to the room. This is something that you see a lot of with custom islands but instead, just going for a salvage piece can still give you the same effect.
If you’re adding in these pieces the difficulty that you might run into is that you can’t match it with your existing countertops. Instead, you can go in an entirely new direction even if you’re on a budget. Since this is a smaller space you can try to go with a mosaic top. This could be more popular glass mosaic tiles or more of a traditional Spanish feeling. Just make sure that since this is probably going to be the main surface in your kitchen you can live with the tile worktop because there is so much grout to clean.
You can afford to go with a little bit higher end material than if you were just replacing all of your kitchen cabinets. This is simply because you’ll be using a lot less of it. One look that you might want consider is glass drawer fronts. Usually we really see these frosted. However, lately we are seeing a lot of vintage design styles that mimic old feed counters. This is going to use a clear glass to really show off the contents of the drawers. You may be able to find some cheap kitchen cabinets at stores such as Restore by Habitat for Humanity. Usually these are in short supply but you may be able to build them up to the right height and you’ll just need a few of them.
If you want the look of farmhouse kitchens then going with antique pieces or trying to replicate this yourself is really a must. This allows you to work with more modern cabinetry and appliances that are perfectly functional but still get this more vintage style feeling in your room. In this case, you can repurpose anything from several old filing cabinets or even a vintage feed counter into a kitchen island. You could also just add bun feet or even columns over a standard rectangular kitchen island that lacks a lot of character. Really adding these bead board or architectural details over your existing island and painting and glazing it is going to give you a very designer look.
If you want more of a modern design then this is usually going to be sleeker but it’s also a chance to showcase high end materials with your kitchen cabinet islands. You might want to go for a waterfall style of cabinet color. This is going to use the same materials on the sides of the island to create a seamless look with the top. This can be quite expensive and it might be a custom kind of look. Stay away a lot from a lot of busy grout designs. This is going to use very clean lines so go with a stone look. Look for stones with lots of pattern in them for the most dramatic effect. It’s not enough to decide on a kitchen cabinet island you also need to decide on the style that you want.
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