20 Creative Ways to Use Wallpaper in the Kitchen
Make the most of your walls and personalize your kitchen with the pattern and texture of wallpaper.
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Cabinetry dominates the kitchen, typically covering about 60 percent of its perimeter. With so little left for walls, how do you make an impact? Wallpaper provides an enormous visual punch in even small doses with pattern, color, and texture. In this kitchen, golden wallpaper warms up a room dominated by white and maple cabinetry.
The wallpaper in this kitchen does it all: it sets the color scheme for the room, adds a bit of detail with a whimsical frieze of faux shelving, and injects a bit of vintage style.
This beautiful botanical print wallpaper adds sophisticated elegance to a cottage-style kitchen and provides the color scheme. The overall print cozies up large expanses of wall, while the fresh palette of cream, jade green, and shell pink feels like morning on a sunny spring day.
Butter-yellow cabinetry is the star of this kitchen, but dollops of red-figured pastoral toile wallpaper bring country character to the space. The charming pattern prevents the cabinetry from overwhelming the eye and adds depth to the backsplash and cornice.
In this black and white kitchen, wallpaper plays a dominant role. The high-contrast toile pattern adds decided character to an otherwise simple color scheme while coordinating well with the architectural details of the room.
White countertops and kitchen cabinetry can quickly overwhelm a room and make it feel cold. Warm it up in a jiffy with a high-contrast wallpaper pattern that surrounds the cabinets with inviting color.
A wallpaper border brings the decorative elements of this kitchen up to ceiling height. Closely matching the ceramic tile and coordinating with the window treatments and chair cushions, the wallpaper print tops the white cabinets with cheery color.
Classic toile wallpaper in red and gold adds to this kitchen's country French flair and matches the color of the kitchen cabinetry. Finding wallpaper that has a matching fabric for a window treatment makes an even bigger style statement.
Wallpaper reminiscent of fabric covers the walls of this kitchen, emphasizing its country style. The simple pattern coordinates with the plaid and floral fabrics at the window and the cabinets and repeats the stripes found in the rug. The linear element also balances the lattice used on the ceiling.
A patterned wallpaper provides visual flow when used in adjacent rooms. Organic blue shapes lead the eye around this kitchen and into the adjoining dining room, tying the spaces together.
Use wallpaper in your kitchen to emphasize a period restoration or vintage-style remodel. Period-appropriate wallpapers abound, from historically accurate hand-blocked papers to kitschy retro designs on modern papers.
Announce your personality to all who enter your kitchen with a large-scale print wallpaper on an accent wall. While such a bold print could be overwhelming if it covered an entire room, as a focal point it strikes just the right balance with the white kitchen cabinetry and solid shapes of the banquette and table.
Country charm gets a dash of sophistication with an accent wall papered in an all-over botanical print. The graceful lines of the pattern help alleviate the stark black of the hutch and Windsor chairs and add an atmosphere of intimacy to the open space of the kitchen.
A small display niche becomes a focal point with the addition of patterned wallpaper around a spoked-grille oval window. Without the paper, the pretty little window could easily be overlooked with the display shelving surrounding it.
For a kitchen short on structural detail, let wallpaper take on the job. A wallpaper wainscot topped by a chair rail enlivens an otherwise plain room while setting the palette for the kitchen. The jazzy colors behind the shallow shelving mimic the look of a built-in hutch and emphasize the display of plates.
Enliven open shelving in a pantry with a quick facelift. A colorful stripe or plaid wallpaper adds depth and interest as well as another decorative element to basic kitchen design.
Pass up the geometry of tile or paneling for your backsplash. Go for a fluid or organic look with patterned wallpaper. Added to this contemporary kitchen, the damask design of the paper brings sinuous elegance to the hard edges of stainless steel, lacquered cabinets, and tempered glass. Add a panel of clear glass over the wallpaper for extra durability.
A kitchen backsplash offers the opportunity to add color and texture, but it's also a blank canvas for a panoramic frieze. A scenic wallpaper border fits right in, creating an instant mural that beckons guests to take a closer look.
Give tired kitchen cabinet doors new life with a wallpaper makeover. Decoupage wallpaper onto the raised center panel of a cabinet door, or remove a center panel, wrap it with wallpaper, then replace it in the door. The paper adds pattern to an expanse of cabinetry and reduces the overall impact of stainless steel, laminate, or wood throughout the room.
Don't throw away the wallpaper scraps from your kitchen project. Instead, cut out motifs from the paper and decoupage them onto furnishings for a cohesive design. Pieces cut and decoupaged to a wooden bowl add a charming accent.
