40 country kitchen ideas to fall in love with
In creating a country-inspired home, the country kitchen is arguably the most important element. And whilst architectural details – high ceilings, wooden beams, and draughty windows with an expansive view out over the countryside – certainly help, they are in no way essential to creating your dream country kitchen.
There are a few hard and fast rules to a country design scheme, such as using shaker cabinets, employing natural materials wherever possible, and displaying piles of crockery and table linen, but country style can run the gamut from modern rustic and traditional, to quaint and cottagecore.
Read on for our round-up of the best country kitchen ideas to fall in love with...
Florals
Nothing beats flowers for putting the ‘country’ into kitchens. An abundance of dainty florals has a lovely enveloping effect, creating the signature cosiness of a country kitchen and softening an otherwise functional space.
Pictured: Wallpaper: Daisy Willow Wallpaper at Morris & Co, Tiles: Country Living Artisan Antique White Tiles at Homebase
Buttermilk tones
Using warm, buttermilk tones is an easy way to instil a bit of calm into an otherwise busy kitchen. It's particularly helpful if you have a hard time editing down your collection of kitchenware and accessories. Rich copper finishes are the perfect foil to plain neutrals.
Pictured: Holkham Waffle Oven Glove and Tea Towel at Tori Murphy
White and wood
This rustic countryside kitchen combines warm, off-white walls with rough woods and a classic flagstone floor. Using natural materials is one of the best ways to bring the outside in — especially if your wood still retains its knots and grains. One of our favourites.
Pictured: Kitchen painted in Lime White at Farrow & Ball
READ MORE: How to create your dream country kitchen
The bootility
The 'bootility' room is a hybrid utility-boot room full of handsome cabinetry and clever storage solutions. A bootility serves to bridge the gap between indoors and out, preventing outdoor dirt from entering the kitchen, as well as holding bulky white goods, utility products, and everyday family clutter.
Pictured: Bespoke boot room by Olive & Barr
READ MORE: How to create a bootility room
Mixed materials
Exposed brick is usually left to stand in all its rustic, reddish glory, but layering on a tiled chevron splash back works beautifully.
Pictured: Calacatta Oceana Oro Marble Mosaic Chevron Tiles at Artisans of Devizes
The kitchen island
A spacious kitchen island is perhaps one of the best ways to bring the family together. "Just like the traditional dining table, the kitchen island is designed to be an engaging area of the kitchen," says Nicolle Whyte, Design Director at Olive & Barr. "Facing your guests while chatting and cooking means you can easily host and enjoy being part of the conversations. An island is a catalyst for discussion, entertainment and a relaxed alternative to formal seating."
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by Olive & Barr
The pantry
These days, kitchen larders or pantries can come in all shapes and sizes, from discreet free-standing units, to whole walk-in rooms with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Depending on the space available to you, larders can be an incredibly practical solution to store dry food, vegetables, and small appliances like coffee machines, microwaves, and toasters.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by Olive & Barr
READ MORE: 6 stylish kitchen larder ideas
Pink
Pink kitchens require a keen eye to avoid an overly saccharine outcome. Rich or chalky shades of pink can be a sophisticated choice, especially when used on shaker cabinets.
Pictured: Country Living Whitstable Kitchen at Homebase
An AGA, naturally
A cornerstone of the country kitchen. AGAs come in many sizes and colours to suit most tastes – we love this sweet buttermilk four door version that sits so happily in a natural recess.
Pictured: Bancha No.298 at Farrow & Ball
Farmhouse sink
In a country kitchen, the devil is in the details. A farmhouse sink is a wonderfully spacious addition, and breaks up a great swathe of cabinetry.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by Burbidge Kitchen Makers
Sage green hues
Refresh and revive your country kitchen with uplifting hues of green. This kitchen from Neptune combines timber ceiling panels with soft sage green walls and cabinets. And it's the most beautiful space. We love the little arched window above the sink to peer out of when washing the dishes.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen at Neptune
A breakfast nook
A breakfast nook provides a level of informality in the kitchen – not quite as relaxed as a cup of tea and a piece of toast on the sofa, but without the ceremony of a dining room. It's an in-between space for leisurely mornings in pyjamas.
Pictured: Breakfast nook in the home of Cathy Nordström, designed by Inuti Design
Modern Delft tiles
Petra Palumbo's hand-decorated Delft tiles are some of the best and most creative available. Where classic Delft patterns lean to quaint and traditional, Petra's are full of clever depiction of disco balls, ice cream cones and dirty martinis.
Pictured: Delft tile selection at Petra Palumbo
Galley kitchens
A country kitchen doesn't have to be expansive with high ceilings and wooden beams. A quaint galley kitchen can have all the hallmarks of a country home, if you embrace shaker cabinets, touches of greenery – in the form of dried herbs or small plotted plants – and, importantly, a display of pots, pans, enamelware and table linen.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by Neptune
Classic grey
Whilst grey might be considered a contemporary kitchen colour, a soft slate grey makes a great base palette for a country kitchen. Keep your cabinetry traditional, and display white enamelware and rustic wood accessories to get the most out of classic grey tones.
Pictured: Chichester kitchen at Neptune
Lots of antiques
Antiques provide a great counter to any clinical finishes or features in a kitchen. “For many, the thought of decorating with antiques previously conjured up images of highly traditional tastes and stuffy old collectables. But this has changed," says interior designer, Naomi Astley Clarke. "People really appreciate how storied items can bring warmth, history, and soul to their homes."
Clever storage spaces
Get smart with your country kitchen by creating hidden spaces for utensils and crockery. We love the practical shelving nestled in these Country Living Whitstable cabinet doors.
Pictured: Country Living Whitstable Kitchen at Homebase
Bistro dining
For homes without a dining room, a little dining corner can be worked into a kitchen alcove, or nestled into the angles of a bay window. Furniture can be integrated, like this bespoke window seat, and a large dining table swapped for a small bistro table.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by deVOL
Stone flooring
A classic country kitchen feature, stone flooring is a super practical choice for high traffic family kitchens. This dark and dramatic cellar kitchen by Plain English uses handsome cream-coloured slabs to offset the traditional burgundy kitchen island. If you use real stone flooring, rather than a replica vinyl for instance, add a hardy jute rug for a bit of warmth underfoot.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by Plain English
READ MORE: 10 kitchen flooring ideas for a refreshed look
Window seats
One for truly compact kitchens – this sweet window seat adds an extra place to perch. Integrated seating just needs a spare corner, and the joy here is that you can create extra storage underneath.
Pictured: House Beautiful Bamboo Blinds at Hillarys
Burgundy
"Shades of burgundy and blush are a great accent for burnished brass, the most on demand handle finish," says Melissa Klink, creative director at Harvey Jones. "The colours work exceptionally well as monochromatic scheme, pairing a lighter more neutralised blush with a darker more saturated burgundy.”
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by Olive & Barr
The rise and rise of sink skirts
Sink skirts are part of the recent resurgence in some quaint areas of kitchen design – we've seen classic pantries return, pan rails holding rows of vintage copper pots, and these sweet ruffled curtains under sinks or units. This will have the effect of breaking up a run of cupboards that can appear imposing in smaller spaces.
Pictured: Dresser Check Sink Skirt at Tori Murphy
Narrow kitchens
A makeshift island if ever we saw one. If you have a particularly narrow galley kitchen, a simple bench can become your version of a kitchen island. "Even if increasing the size of your kitchen is not an option, the integration of a small kitchen island or peninsular unit can create the ultimate divide," says Tom Howley, Creative Design Director at Tom Howley.
Splashbacks
This is a really unexpected take on the splashback, but works so well surrounded by wood cabinetry. "We have witnessed the increasing popularity of using a single, continuous slab of material, such as marble, granite and quartz as the backsplash, extending from countertop to ceiling," says Al Bruce, the Founder of Olive & Barr. "The slab splashback serves as a focal point, showcasing the beauty and natural patterns of the chosen material."
Traditional cabinetry
This smart country kitchen embraces traditional cabinetry, but also has a more modern feel. The under-sink storage provides a practical place to tidy away extra plates, cups and utensils. "Finishing touches underline the design of a classically country kitchen," says Tom Howley. "Cornices, skirting boards and columns or pillars are the final elements of the design. They bring the kitchen together, and are carefully designed to distinguish country kitchens from their more modern counterparts."
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by Tom Howley
READ MORE: The best shaker kitchen doors
Uplifting your small storage
Some people are loath to decant dried goods into mason jars or fruit and veg into baskets, but if you have an open pantry or any open units in the kitchen, a line of mason jars or some stacked crates will look considerably less cluttered than a sea of supermarket packaging.
READ MORE: 6 ways to make a kitchen larder work for you
Mustard
Mustard yellow is a great choice to uplift pokey kitchens without much natural light. Combining yellow cabinetry or walls with raw materials like natural woods and stone offsets any risk of your yellows appearing too bright or garish.
Hiding clutter
Hiding your kitchen clutter is a perfectly reasonable – and realistic – solution in a busy family kitchen where there is a requisite level of household mess. This attractive solution is a bit of a covert money-saver too where curtains can be hung instead of replacing worn out or dated cabinets.
Go green
No other kitchen colour can evoke countryside scenes quite as well as green. Tom Howley says: ‘Green kitchens are having something of a moment right now. As a colour we associate primarily with nature, this grounding shade has an incredible way of reconnecting us with our surroundings, creating moments of calm and positivity.'
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen by Tom Howley
The big statement
This handsome kitchen in Somerset (tour the whole home here) has a striking oak island with a brass worktop as its principal feature, requiring little more than a fruit bowl as a finishing flourish.
Feature tiling
Don't be afraid to embrace colour in your country kitchen. Tiling is a great way to add pops of colour and brighten up an otherwise dark space – whether you choose touches of forest green, dark navy or even bursts of bright red.
Display your wares
In a country kitchen, accessories and trinkets are usually displayed – sometimes neatly, and sometimes in a charming disarray. Open or glass-fronted display units can store pans, crockery, and linens, rustic apple crates or willow baskets, and and saves valuable drawer space.
Pictured: Henley kitchen at Neptune
Bright white
High ceilings and expansive walls are a gift when creating a country kitchen, and the addition here of interesting wooden beams gives the feeling of a converted barn. With clean lines and a minimal colour palette, this is proof that country kitchens don't always have to err on the side of traditional
READ MORE: 7 golden rules for decluttering your kitchen
Paint with a sheen
Any paint with a gloss or eggshell finish will work wonderfully to reflect natural light and make your kitchen feel brighter and more expansive. It won't be suitable for all surfaces – it's a tricky one for walls unless they are clad in wood like this fabulous green Neptune kitchen – but we've seen it used successfully on ceilings, staircases and floors. A lacquer on all your wooden surfaces – doors, bannisters, kitchen cabinets – will work in much the same way.
Pictured: Wycombe Bar Stool at Neptune
Floral wallpaper
A common feature of country kitchens is the confident use of print across walls, soft furnishings, window dressing, and just about anything else you can upholster or paint. This is a brilliant wallpaper for the bold decorator, in sugary sweet colours and adorned with hand-drawn flowers.
Pictured: Sophie Robinson x Harlequin Woodland Floral Wallpaper
Mixing warm neutrals
A soft and welcoming kitchen for those who want to create a calming space for cooking. This deVOL kitchen mixes an array of neutrals – soft cream, pale stone, and brilliant white accents – with a splash of fiery orange to make the most of the available natural light.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen at deVOL
Colourful cabinets
Nothing will brighten your country kitchen quite as effectively as a splash of paint on your cabinets. If you're brave, embrace deep greens, turquoise blues and reds, and keep your base palette on your walls and floors a soft neutral.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen at Olive & Barr
Exposed metalwork
Country style tends to embrace exposed materials – plaster on the walls, wooden beams, stone flooring – but in the absence of any of those, an easy way to achieve this look is with metalwork. We love the exposed copper piping here, matched with wall-mounted railings for displaying spoons and pots.
Pictured: Bespoke kitchen at Neptune
Vintage features
Country kitchens can sometimes eschew modern appliances and devices, hiding them away or choosing more traditional alternatives. This charming laundry maid from deVOL is a great example, keeping freshly-washed laundry and linens up and away from your floors and surfaces.
Pictured: The Laundry Maid by deVOL
Uniform blue
Perhaps not your usual choice of kitchen colour, but a beautiful option nonetheless. Pale blue is an endlessly versatile base – sitting happily with black, white, classic greys and even a host of other blues as shown here.
You Might Also Like
