So many times, I see homes with a lovely fireplace in their great room and a lovely kitchen nearby – but they don’t look like they belong in the same house. Here’s some inspiration to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.
Should your fireplace in the great room relate to your kitchen?
Yes, it definitely should.
Don’t install a fireplace without reading this post first.
Your Fireplace Should Look Like it Belongs with Your Kitchen Design
Here is some inspiration from kitchens and great rooms that are not necessarily from the same house (actually only the first one is) but sure look like they could be:
This traditional kitchen and great room look like they belong together with similar styles and the blue colour palette.
Via House Beautiful
A white millwork fireplace pairs perfectly with a classic, all-white kitchen.
These yellow kitchen cabinets are definitely a colour that should be repeated in your great room, just like these soft yellows in the decor and wall coverings of this great room on the right.
A modern, wood fireplace belongs with a modern kitchen design.
This lovely stone fireplace looks right at home next to a warm and rustic kitchen.
Again, lots of custom white millwork/moldings in the great room relates nicely to white millwork kitchen cabinets.
This fresh blue and green colour palette in the great room shouldn’t be ignored. And, this white kitchen punctuated with pops of bright green brings harmony to both spaces.
Are you happy with the way your great room relates to the kitchen? You’d be surprised how often this connection is not considered by renovators or builders!
If you aren’t happy, but just can’t put your finger on what is wrong with the space, I can help you with one of my eDesign consultations.
And, if you want to learn more about my groundbreaking System for Specifying Colour, download my How to Choose Colour eBook or my White is Complicated eBook.
Have a great weekend everyone! xo Maria
Related posts:
Why You’ve Never had a Good Contractor
The Case for Matchy Matchy Decorating
Danger: Your Designer has Left the Building
Still want to learn more?
To get my complete step-by-step system on how to get colour to do what you want and to make sure the undertones in your home are right, order my large painted colour board samples!
If you would like to learn how to choose colour with confidence, become a True Colour Expert.
Great examples of rooms that relate to each other! I love the blue living room/green kitchen.
It’s amazing the number of things you have to consider when you open up a space. And it’s such a fun design challenge to make it all work together. These are all lovely examples of spaces that have a sense of belonging and yet have a distinct design.
Ha – what a timely post! 🙂
It’s not an issue for me as, typical for the old house it’s in, my kitchen is entirely separate from everything. That aside, these are really great examples and it sure is an important design consideration!
Yup, I agree totally. I took a lot of care when I redid my kitchen and great room addition. I painted and antiqued the fireplace mantel to blend with the cabinetry. The walls in the great room are a soft cinnamon plaster – that relates to the tones in the granite. The island’s woodgraining relates to the flooring in the great room. Flow is important.
Great post…love that first great room. What an awesome mantel!
Linda
Maria, great post. I totally agree. My fireplace is beautiful, grey and beige and brown stone but if I had it to do over again would just go with a white mantel. I inherited this and am working with it however, it does limit me with the new clean fresh white look a bit, which I would love to incorporate more. The creams, soft blues, pear colors, teals and the new golden yellow work well as well as distressed white and grey. (If I ever finish my own room to my satisfactory I will send a pic) It’s a bit strange, seems as though in this new era of decorating, even though, I love breaking the rules sometimes, flow is being forgotten, something I always stressed with my customers before? I am even seeing bloggers paint their beautiful stone fireplaces and wondering if they will regret it some day, when the design look softens a bit again. Love your thoughts…
Speaks my language…every room, to me, should have “just a leetle” connection. franki
Yes, Yes, Yes is the answer. I remember a post on HOUZZ a couple of years ago. A user sent in pics of their new kitchen/family room, saying the room didn’t work for them and asking what color paint they should change to. Their kitchen had ended with a wall of sliding glass doors out to a large patio which had an enormous stone fireplace/oven arrangement (looked like something out of a castle). They moved the glass wall from the right side of the fireplace to the left, incorporating it into the new family room, while proceeding to redo the kitchen. The great tragedy was that everything they did in the new kitchen (cabinets, countertop, backsplash, tile floors over the entire area and wall paint had yellow undertones and this massive, almost complete wall of stone had screaming pink undertones. No one including no designer told them, or had the heart to tell them, that there wasn’t a paint color in the world that was going to work. Don’t know if they’d had a designer help them redo – if so, that designer should have been shot or at least sued. I didn’t follow the posts to see how it all ended but I did cry for them.
I was lucky enough to work with a client who allowed me to tear down some walls, so that the fireplace could be IN the kitchen. We enlarged the kitchen dramatically, coordinated the cabinet and mantel colours and client loved it.
Oh my! Thank goodness my mantel is white to tie in with my cabinets.
Hi Maria, I am trying to pick out between a couple of fireplaces for our home/great room. Couldn’t have been any better timing for your post. Be so glad when it’s actually done.
With all of the open floor plans these days, there has to be a perfect coordination and most of the homes I’ve been in have been designed and built to coordinate like the beautiful examples you have shown. Our house is semi-open with a weird layout of the formal dining room being open to the family room and sharing a see-through fireplace. The kitchen is not visible from the family room, but is open to the dining room, so still the fireplace has to relate. And we are constantly working on this house so eventually…hopefully before I don’t care any more…the kitchen and the fireplace will relate with beautiful, fresh new white cabinets and mantel. Thanks for sharing your always wonderful expertise, Maria!
Living in an old house I don’t have this problem, but this is one of my favourite posts as it really relates to any two spaces that can can be seen together.the examples are stunning…love the mcm one.
Thanks for all the examples
Great article! As a homeowner who just bought a six year old house with a open floor plan, I realize my kitchen and family room do not flow. My family room fireplace has a beige color marble surround with white wood mantel and bookshelves flanking it. My kitchen has Baltic brown granite with maple wood stained cabinets with a brown glaze. They are pretty cabinets, but I think it would look better if they were white. I just am not sure if I must incorporate a beige color[like my fireplace surround] into my new counter/backsplash since I would prefer to go with white or grey. Any opinions?
Hey Maria, I was just at a friend’s house yesterday & she was saying this very thing… And she wants a portion of her wall taken down from the kitchen to be able to see her fireplace & her family. Talk about perfect timing!
Honestly, you make it seem too easy! And it really is…everything fixed really should match and coordinate if you have an open floor plan. Even the outside. Thank you…thank you…thank you.
Love the examples and totally agree. Question is what do you do with a granite fireplace (floor to 12′ ceiling) that reads very pink and does not relate to counter top, and flooring in kitchen at all. Faux paint? I would love to cover it up with mill work, but hubby loves the workmanship of the granite work, oi vey!
Great examples!!!!! Thank you!