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The living room and bedroom are both extremely important spaces in your house, but the kitchen is the soul of your home. It’s where you prep food for meals with family and friends, and it’s always where the party starts and ends. Your kitchen needs to be pretty to look at and functional, and if yours currently isn’t, it might be time to consider a kitchen makeover. Ahead, you’ll see designer spaces filled with ideas worth splurging on as well as other stylish kitchen makeovers that you can complete on a tighter budget, all with useful before and after photos that demonstrate you can create your dream cooking space even with an outdated canvas.
For more kitchen inspiration:
- 60 Small Kitchen Ideas That Maximize Your Space in Style
- 30 Modern Kitchens That Are Endlessly Versatile
- 100 Kitchen Design Ideas That'll Make You Want to Redo Yours
1
Before: Neutral and Bland
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this kitchen—the cabinets all appear to be in good shape, and the features are modern enough. However, it simply didn’t fit the founder of KES Studio, Kara Smith’s, client's “California Ease” vibe.
2
After: Neutral and Bright
Smith’s client wanted a kitchen that was calming but functional, so the designer “started with a neutral base featuring the perfect color of white in combination with other neutral tones and textures,” Smith says. “For the floors and cabinets, we selected a warm white oak with a bit of texture that contrasts with the soft coloring and texture of the honed Cristallo Quartzite countertops. The stone adds refinement and a bit of luxury to the space but is also durable.”
Related: 16 Designer Kitchens Featuring Neutral Paint Colors
3
Before: Too Kitschy
Just because a kitchen lives in a historic home doesn‘t mean it has to have outdated features and retro decor. The bursts of red are appreciated in this otherwise bland space, but they simply don’t fit the classic look that Gabriela Eisenhart’s client was looking for.
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4
After: Completely Timeless
Eisenhart, the founder and principal designer of Silo Studios, opened up the space above and turned it into a kitchen that’s timeless and calming. She explains, “Given its historical significance, our goal was to honor the home’s original architecture and create a kitchen that embodied its timeless charm.” She opened it up into the dining space to create a better flow for her clients who love to host parties.
Related: How to Design a Timeless Kitchen You'll Love Forever
5
Before: Nothing Special
While many homeowners would be happy with or even love having this kitchen in their home, designer Jenn Feldman wanted something a little more special and a lot more aesthetically pleasing in her family’s home.
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After: Functional and Dreamy
“Designing this new kitchen space for my family was a combination of form, function, and deep aesthetic dreamland,” Feldman says. “We embarked on a full gut renovation, focusing on space planning the long galley-style layout to a better functionality and opening up the island to create an eat-in space for my family of four.”
Related: 25 Galley Kitchen Ideas That Maximize Your Space
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7
Before: Extremely Heavy
This kitchen worked for Becky Shea’s clients while they had kids in the house, but the new empty nesters wanted to give the dark and heavy space a gut renovation.
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After: Sophisticated and Moody
This kitchen makeover kept the moody colors but uses them in much more refined ways. “The parquet floor is also fully custom, with walnut and white oak inlays designed by us and handmade in Pennsylvania, with its stain sampled and completed onsite,” Shea says. “Since our clients’ kitchen is where everyone historically gathers, we opened up the space to include a new coffee bar and banquet complete with plenty of additional storage and hidden freezer and refrigerator drawers.”
Related: This Florida Kitchen Is Steeped in Moody Blues
9
Before: 1990s Dream Kitchen
This kitchen had not been touched since Debbie Mathews’s clients bought it in the 1990s. However, as avid home chefs, the couple knew that once their children left the house, it was time to put in their modern dream cooking space.
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10
After: Bright and Modern
First things first: The outdated appliances and overall darkness needed to go. The main kitchen changes involved: “Adding upper glass-front cabinets, utilizing a light color palette of creams and whites, hanging glass bell jar lanterns over the island, and installing calacatta gold extra marble for the countertops.”
Related: 27 White Kitchens That Look Like Design Heaven
11
Before: Unnecessary Features
An awkward layout and an unnecessary brick oven made this kitchen an ideal candidate for a kitchen makeover. As Grace Brackman of Maggie Griffin Design says, “After all of the wear and tear of raising two boys, it was time for an update.”
12
After: New and Improved Layout
By removing the oversize brick oven that was rarely used by her clients, Brackman was able to “reconfigure the layout and increase the size of the island without the ‘brand new’ kitchen feel.”
Related: 47 Ways To Upgrade Your Kitchen Island
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13
Before: Good Bones
Though this kitchen wasn’t aesthetically pleasing to Morgan Newfield’s client, the designer knew that it wouldn’t take much to turn this space into something their client would love. The kitchen had good bones to work with—a light renovation would turn this room into something beautiful again.
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After: Warm and Inviting
“A good paint job, terrific color story, beautiful lighting, and interesting furnishings can transform the space in a meaningful way,” Newfield explains. “We were aligned with our client in our desire to personalize their kitchen and make it a warm and inviting space.” With cabinted painted in Farrow & Ball Dead Salmon, washable and wearable bone-colored vinyl counter stools, and alabaster-and-brass pendant lights, the kitchen looks brand new.
Related: These Kitchen Updates Make Houses Sell for a Lot More Money
15
Before: Overwhelming and Small
As plenty of other historical houses, the kitchen in this Laguna Beach home was too small for Morgan Newfield’s clients. However, with sweeping ocean views out the window, Newfield’s team knew this room could do and be so much more.
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16
After: Coastal and Large
A huge part of this makeover was enlarging the kitchen, taking existing square feet from the adjacent dining and living rooms. “Since the home was originally conceived of as a cottage, we wanted to keep that warm feel in the kitchen while allowing for an update and a modern vibe,” Newfield says. “We were inspired by the changing color of the sand and sea in the home’s oceans views, so we combined a lightly stained white oak with a beautiful green paint color, Farrow & Ball Lichen.”
Related: 15 Green Kitchens That’ll Make You Want to Redo Yours
17
Before: Not Enough Storage
For a kitchen in the home of someone who adores cooking and entertaining, this one was severely lacking in storage space and didn’t take full advantage of the surrounding outdoor area. “The elevated nature of the house affords it fantastic views west over vineyards, across the Russian River Valley to the coastal mountain range beyond,” Matthew Bowles, founder and principal architect at TenBooks, explains.
18
After: A Home Chef‘s Paradise
First and foremost, the kitchen needed to be functional. It took just short a gut renovation—they did everything but change the home’s footprint—to get it there. “We worked closely with the chef of the family, Mike, to fine-tune the requirements for adjacency, surfaces, and lighting. He wanted a kitchen with lots of storage and a large island for entertaining and exhibition-style cooking,” Bowles says. They also installed large windows along the western and northern walls to capture the sunset views, creating an entertainment hub.
Related: How to Design a Chef-Worthy Kitchen
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19
Before: Too Country
Though this humble kitchen may work for some, it didn’t work for Kishani Perera’s clients who wanted something completely luxe. It required a complete gut renovation, resulting in a completely new-looking kitchen.
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After: Glamorous and Elevated
“The architect completely reconfigured this kitchen to improve the flow and allow for an enormous island,” Perera explains. Along with new walnut cabinetry and custom brass hardware, the designer also installed a marble countertop that wouldn’t compete with the cabinets’ glamour. “We chose a subtle Calacatta emerald and used neutral tiles from Clé to complement,” she says.
Related: 69 Kitchen Cabinet Ideas to Refresh Your Space
Hadley Mendelsohn
Contributor
Hadley Mendelsohn is the co-host and executive producer of the podcast Dark House. When she's not busy writing about interiors, you can find her scouring vintage stores, reading, researching ghost stories, or stumbling about because she probably lost her glasses again. Along with interior design, she writes about everything from travel to entertainment, beauty, social issues, relationships, fashion, food, and on very special occasions, witches, ghosts, and other Halloween haunts. Her work has also been published in MyDomaine, Who What Wear, Man Repeller, Matches Fashion, Byrdie, and more.
Meghan Shouse
Assistant Editor
Meghan Shouse is House Beautiful's Assistant Editor, a role she has held since September 2023. On top of being the magazine's go-to Waco expert, Meghan also touches on quite a few other verticals in the digital space, like hot news content featuring your favorite HGTV stars, home design inspiration, and the latest interior TikTok trends. However, her favorite pieces are the ones that start conversations, such as stories about resale value and whether or not the Solo cup is chic. Before becoming a home writer, Meghan worked in the fashion industry for two years, writing for Harper's Bazaar after graduating from Iowa State University with a bachelor's degree in apparel merchandising. When she's not interviewing interior designers about home trends, you can find Meghan reading a fictional thriller with her cat in her lap, planning themed parties, or strolling through flea markets searching for chunky candle holders and vintage bookends.
