You and your guests can spot an Ikea kitchen miles away.  

How to Just Love Your Ikea Kitchen

Fortunately, there are hacks for your Ikea kitchen that let you eliminate the hate list and create a customized look. Whether you have a small kitchen or a space big enough for a kitchen island, these ideas will make it look like you hired an interior designer instead of shopping at Ikea.

Ikea Hacks for Your Kitchen

You can take your Ikea kitchen customization to whatever level you want. But the following hacks are all easily doable and relatively affordable.

1. Reface the Cabinets: if there’s one sure sign of an Ikea kitchen, it is the whiteness. But you can say goodbye to all that by refacing the cabinets. The most DIY way to do that is to pick your favourite Benjamin Moore paint colour and simply paint the cabinets. Or you can kick it up a notch with professional cabinet refacing.
   
2. Swap the Countertop: while Ikea gives you options for your counter space, they might still say ‘Ikea’. But a look around the internet or local counter specialists can reveal some bargains that may just fit even a small space. Whether you prefer a granite or marble top, it will definitely do the trick.
   
3. Get Creative with the Knobs and Handles – They may be one of the smallest elements of the overall kitchen. But you’ll be amazed at the difference that custom knobs and pulls will make. Again, you can find a great variety of pulls and handles at a hardware store, or you can get a little more eclectic by shopping at antique stores or collectors’ websites.

Need some color inspiration for your next IKEA hack project? Check out Benjamin Moore’s new 2019 colour of the year and prepare to swoon.

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Stay Ahead of the Design Trends Curve

Even if you follow your own design instincts and direction, it always helps to know what’s happening on the street. It can help you develop your own ideas, or show you what you want to avoid.

5 Interior Design Trends for 2019

Without further ado, here are the design trends we’ve identified for 2019.

1. Benjamin Moore Paint Colour of the Year – The richness of recent Benjamin Moore Colours of the Year, including 2018’s Caliente and 2017’s Shadow, made then well suited for accent walls. But the 2019 Colour of the Year, Metropolitan AF-690, will work in entire living rooms, bedrooms or even whole-house applications.
2. Floral Patterns – Whether it’s in the fabric of a piece of furniture, or on the wall in paper designs, floral patterns are so 2019. And we mean just about anything floral, from subdued tones as a backdrop to bold colour patterns as a focal point.
3. Bold Backsplashes – While the black and white kitchen is in the midst of a long run of popularity, it’s time to open up more opportunities for colour and patterns. The backsplash is it.
4. Millennial Pink & Emerald Green Are Out for Whole Rooms – Don’t get us wrong, we love millennial pink and emerald green. But they seem to have been part of ‘interior design trends’ since the start of the century. Time to change all that. They’ll make great accent colours in a Metropolitan-coloured room.
5. Get Acrylic – From furniture to kitchen countertops, acrylics are on the rise. Clear acrylic furniture is popular for smaller places, like all those downtown Toronto condos. And newer resins make acrylic countertops durable enough to be an option in the kitchen.

Curious to find out more about Metropolitan AF-690? Check out our last blog post Introducing Benjamin Moore’s Colour of the Year for 2019.

The post 2019 Interior Design Trends Your Clients Will Love appeared first on The Paint People.

Except that moment may be contributing to your day-to-day stress like anything else.

You might not realize it, but elements of your interior décor can contribute to your feelings of stress, even anxiety.

3 Ways Your Interior Décor May Cause Stress

It can happen in the nicest of homes, with lots of space and what are otherwise considered great decorating ideas. Whether it’s the decorating mix, or due to the passage of time, the following can contribute to your feelings of stress at home.

1. Unintentional Clutter – Let’s start with an example. Gallery walls are very popular. Whether you combine works of art, family photos, and mementos, or an eclectic mix of things, when you’re done, it looks great.
   But, as time goes on, things like galleries walls or curio cabinets can actually become over-stimulating. This is especially true in our always connected and communicating world.
   To avoid unintentional clutter, try to give everything in your décor a bit of breathing room and balance.
   
2. You Over-Cooked it with Popular Paint Colours – We all like to have the latest décor trends, like those in wall paints. But those colours, like Benjamin Moore’s colours of the year, aren’t always meant to be used wholesale throughout the room or house. They will look great when you first use them. But the bolder colours can get ‘in your face’ after a while. And even lighter colours, and a lighter, texture-less, minimal décor, can be sleek on the first appearance, but too much so to be comfortable in the long run.
   
3. There’s No Green – Want to break up the intensity of a bold colour? Want to add warmth to your light, minimalist look? Add some greenery. And take as much time with fitting them into your décor as you would with any other part of the décor. If you have a green thumb, great. If you don’t, choose hardier varieties that can withstand abuse while you learn how to keep everything healthy. Plants dying all around you can be stress-inducing too.

If you want to learn more about paint colours and your décor, call or visit your nearest The Paint People location.

The post Stressed Out? Your Interior Décor Could be the Culprit appeared first on The Paint People.