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An industrial kitchen is a great blend of vintage and modern design.
Industrial kitchens make ample use of open brick, metal, exposed beams, natural wood, and solid countertops. It’s a crisp and raw form of interior design with lots of room for personal touches.
If you’re looking into creating an industrial style kitchen, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The style is so versatile that it’s hard to know where to start. Modern industrial interior design takes cutting-edge kitchen equipment and design and adds a bit of raw edge.
This seems in tall order. Even a brief perusal of the options available for design an industrial kitchen reveals a number of options for anything and everything.
Here’s our guide to helping you design a smart, modern industrial kitchen that looks great as well as works as a great space to use to cook, eat, and socialize.
Industrial Kitchen Cabinets
Image source: Garden Designs
The basis of any good kitchen design is its cabinets. There are a lot of great choices for industrial kitchen cabinets. The key is to make the space seem as big as possible, even in a small kitchen. Plenty of storage space is a big help, as is proper sizing of your kitchen cabinets.
Mix textures and contrast elements. Use natural wood cabinets with a pewter finish. Have sleek metal cabinets with glass windows set into them. Industrial kitchen design can be as sleek or rough as you want. The cabinets you use are a big part of how the final result looks.
Image source: Rosewood Custom Builders
For cabinet and drawer pulls, you can use anything that looks good. Simple metal pulls or odd more industrial ones made from reclaimed materials are both good choices.
Plastic and bright colors don’t fit into an industrial kitchen very well and should be avoided. Larger than life handles make your kitchen seem practical and focused on usability, one of the marks of industrial design.
Industrial Kitchen Shelving
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Contrast your closed cabinets with open shelving. Large, natural wood shelves look very good, as do brushed steel or bronze metal shelves. Avoid anything that seems too delicate and pass up on any floral flourishes. You can find wooden shelves that look like exposed beams that look great in an industrial kitchen.
Image source: Paul Craig Photography
Open shelving also gives you a great opportunity to display accessories or even your dishes. Use practical-looking containers, like mason jars or spice jars with bold lettering. Again, you don’t want anything that implies delicacy. Your industrial kitchen gets its organic touches from ample use of unfinished wood, not images of leaves and flowers.
Industrial Kitchen Sink
Image source: Camilla Banks Interior Design
An industrial kitchen sink should be big and pragmatic. Large farmhouse sinks, originally meant to be used for canning, cooking, and washing, look great as long as they’re not brightly colored. You can also use smaller, more modern sinks, as well. Take a look at rustically styled sinks to get some great ideas.
Your industrial kitchen faucet and fixtures can have a number of looks. If you want your kitchen to look particularly rustic, get a faucet and fixtures that have a weather-beaten look.
Image source: TOLA architecture
You can also look for sleeker brushed metal versions for a more modern take on the style. The fixtures should all be large and easy to spot. Again, this gives the industrial kitchen a feeling of pragmatism.
Industrial Kitchen Lighting
Image source: KitchenLab | Rebekah Zaveloff Interiors
Look for rustic lighting fixtures or more modern updates of the same style. Lights that mimic mine lights, for instance, look great, offering a rough vintage look. Recessed, subdued lighting allows the space and the details in it to star.
Image source: Honey Bee Interiors
You need ample lighting to be able to cook well, so remember to select lighting that makes sure you can see the potato you’re skinning. Warm lighting also looks really great in industrial kitchens, off-setting the roughness of the style and making the space more welcoming.
Image source: Designaspace
If you plan to eat and entertain in this kitchen, that’s a vital touch. Industrial kitchens can easily seem cold and forbidding. Good lighting choices help keep this from happening.
Industrial Kitchen Island
Image source: Rost Artisan Builders
Make sure there is ample room between your counters and your industrial kitchen island. This makes the space workmanlike and is very important to the achieving the industrial style effectively.
When it comes to the materials used to make the kitchen island, raw materials work great. Consider using rustic timbers for siding. For the surface, dark granite or neutral low gloss granite look great.
Image source: KuDa Photography
Marble is too glossy and luxurious for the practical feel of an industrial kitchen, so try to avoid it. Granite has an industrial, tough feel and look. You could also use butcher block as a kitchen island surface. It’s tough and rough, perfect for an industrial style kitchen.
Industrial Kitchen Chairs
Image source: Compass and Rose
Matching kitchen chairs look better in industrial kitchens than a mix-and-match collection. You want to use chairs that are comfortable but not soft-looking or overly elegant. Square shapes look good.
See if you can find chairs with industrial motifs, like being made of pipes. Unfinished wood chairs are a good choice that will help balance out the hard metal and stone found throughout an industrial kitchen.
Image source: Jane Kim Design
For a sleeker look, find black finished chairs in sparse Scandinavian styles. This might also be a good budget option since these kinds of chairs can be easily found in IKEA and other furniture stores.
Industrial Kitchen Equipment
Image source: TOLA architecture
Your utensils, refrigerator, stove, washing machine, and oven should all be metal. Avoid chrome and instead look for brushed metal. Industrial kitchens look like factory floors and durable metal items help reinforce that image.
Feel free to use retro-inspired fridges and other kitchen equipment if that’s the industrial look you’re going for. Avoid brighter colors, however.
Image source: Esther Hershcovich
Don’t feel the need to hide your cookware. Feel free to hang large utensils out where they’re easy to grab and use. This creates a lived-in and practical effect.
Conclusion
An industrial kitchen is a useful space that also looks great. It blends retro and modern styles into a raw, edgy look that works for both large spaces and small ones.