Colours of the Mediterranean Kitchen

Close your eyes and try to relive the sensations from your last holiday by the Mediterranean Sea: the distant sound of the waves, the unique sensation of the salty air and the hot sun on your bronzed skin, a peaceful fishermen's village with small white houses perched along the cliffs that line the coast, the scent of the fish and the spices. Those flavours, those colours, those tastes! 

Now imagine recreating a small Mediterranean corner in your kitchen, where you will find that magic and South-European hospitality every day and the inspiration to recreate those unique flavours. It can be simpler than you would imagine!

The Mediterranean lifestyle combines several different cultures, unleashing colourful styles in various fields such as art and design, while maintaining a warm sensation of well-being. But beyond the aesthetics, experts say that the Mediterranean lifestyle and diet can help you stay young and live longer! That’s right, it is not just the kitchen that will benefit here, as this makeover could very well inspire you towards a healthier and happier tomorrow. 

A Mediterranean-styled kitchen may be designed in several different colour palettes and layouts. It is usually a separate room with plenty of work and storage space, while also managing to stay warm, elegant and timeless looking. If you are thinking about giving your existing kitchen a Mediterranean makeover, you can certainly find some inspiration online to get a good idea of what to expect. But the key to it is picking the elements and the details that you really like and then building around them to give your room a very personalised touch.

Mediterranean kitchens allow for both cold and warm colours: blue and yellow is a classic combination, inspired by the shades of the sea and the sun. If you have a traditional, rustic kitchen, a lighter makeover can be very easy adding some handmade pieces. But today we often see great designs that combine sleek, contemporary kitchen design with new original elements and exciting colours.  This makes the kitchen even more appealing during the grey, cold winter months ahead.

One of the most powerful additions to create a bold Mediterranean flair in the room are tiles. Sometimes  just a shelf or a niche covered with decorative tiles is more than enough to create a pleasant Mediterranean atmosphere. Portuguese Azulejos, Italian majolica, Moroccan and other cement tiles are really popular right now. You may have seen them when browsing interior designs without recognizing their unique qualities, patterns and tints. Cement tiles often come with an “aged”, vintage effect that adds extra character to the designs. They are made using different clay colours rather than glazing them to create the patterns.  As the tiles age, their unique design never wears away. In some collections craftsmen create light imperfections that enhance the result even more! 

If you've refurnished  a whole room, you can combine the colors with the decor, so you do not overuse the color scheme in the surrounding area. This could be a limited decorated area,  the backsplash or the flooring for example, which delicately embellishes the environment and creates the context for placing unique stand-alone design pieces with contrasting colors. You can choose the lighter tints of vintage cement tiles to decorate the floor underneath and the wall behind a red KitchenAid Iconic fridge, as well as colorful Azulejos to create an original   frame around stainless steel Vertigo refrigerators or professional columns like those from Chef Touch.

Ceramic tiles are great for both kitchen backsplashes and flooring, but they can also be used for countertops. Besides their aesthetic value as beautiful decorations, ceramic tiles also serve a functional purpose by being resistant to high temperatures. 

In a contemporary kitchen design, you can use tiles as giant pixels to cover surfaces with bright colours and patterns. Mixing contemporary design and traditional patterns is the idea behind the 36e8 MadeTerraneo kitchen by LAGO. This originated from a trip to Portugal and evolved around the contrast between tradition (hand-crafted ceramic squares that applied Arab and European styles to small decorated pieces of artwork) and innovation, using these ceramic tiles as a work surface and separate modules that are combined into irregular shapes in a Mediterranean-style modular kitchen.

If you want to create more movement, try to think of geometric shapes beyond simple, straight lines and combine them with other materials, like wood or concrete. In addition to these materials, you can also use other kitchen elements to create a dialog between the variety of patterns and shades. For this purpose, the timeless design of the KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer is a real passepartout, thanks to its wide range of colors.