How to Decorate Your Kitchen to a Colonial Style

Kitchens were the heart of the American colonial-era home. The colonial housewife cooked in a large central fireplace that also provided heat for the home. Furniture was handcrafted and simple, and colors were subdued. Today's country decor styles are rooted in colonial decorating. Whether you have a new farmhouse or a historic salt box, you can bring the elements of the colonial-style kitchen to your home. Does this Spark an idea?

Instructions

1

Paint the kitchen in muted colors like gray-blue, cream, sage green, mustard and colonial red. Numerous paint manufacturers like Behr and Valspar carry a line of historically authentic colors. Choose a colonial blue for the cupboards and soft green for the window trim. Or paint the cabinets red, and bring in antique or reproduction pieces in shades of blue or mustard milk paint. Use cream paint on wainscoting, and finish the wall with sage green.

2

Decorate a kitchen fireplace, if available. Draw a rocking chair up to the hearth to provide a cozy spot to take a break from food preparation. Set large cast iron pots and crocks on the hearth. Substitute a stove situated in an alcove with a mantel above it. Place antique kitchen implements, small crocks and pottery bowls on the mantel.

3

Serve meals on a rustic farm table. Surround it with mismatched wooden ladder back chairs sporting rushed or caned seats. Opt for bow back Windsor chairs, either antique or aged, to look worn and weathered or basic wooden chairs with plank seats. Provide extra seating with weathered benches. Set the table with a homespun or nubby linen tablecloth and pottery dishes. Cracked or chipped crockery is fine. In a colonial home, items would not have been discarded just because they were worn or flawed.

4

Hang plain cupboards in a Shaker- or Amish-style or cupboards fashioned from bead board. Choose black iron hinges and pulls, or opt for plain wooden knobs. Use open wooden shelves to display a collection of wooden bowls, crocks or cutting boards. Bring in antique or reproduction pie safes and canning cupboards for storage.

5

Choose butcher block countertops. Forgo a traditional center island for an antique chopping block or dry sink.

6

Lay wooden floors. Choose wide pine planks, and distress them before you finish and seal them. Dot the floor with braided or rag rugs. Paint the floor in a checkerboard design, or stencil the border.

7

Illuminate your kitchen with punched tin or cast iron fixtures. Highlight the walls with tin or metal sconces.

8

Dress the windows with plain cotton or muslin curtains. Choose tab curtains, and hang them on a wooden rod. Use thumbtacks or small nails to attach curtains directly to the window trim.

9

Dry bunches of flowers and herbs from ceiling beams. Hang baskets on the beams. Suspend a wrought iron pot rack over the island, and use it to display copper and cast iron pots and pans.