Top Tips to Transform Your Home with Texture

October 29, 2024

The Importance of Textures in Home Design

Textures play a key role in transforming your home into a warm, welcoming, and visually appealing space. Together with your layout, color scheme, and key design features, textures elevate your aesthetic by adding depth and dimension to home living spaces. By including a variety of textures, your home becomes a more engaging and comfortable space that appeals to all the senses.

View of a kitchen

In all areas of the home, textures play a role in creating cohesive designs, from kitchens and bathrooms to living rooms and outdoor entertainment spaces. There are many opportunities to incorporate texture with different materials, finishes, and accessories to achieve a balanced design. For example, kitchen designs let you partner cabinets, countertops, backsplash, and accessories to add character to your space. In bathrooms, cabinetry and tile work together to create a sophisticated style, accented by hardware and other key fixtures. Other rooms in your home may combine furnishings, rugs, soft textiles, and accessories to create a cohesive design aesthetic.

Key Principles to Follow for Textures in Design

View of a kitchen

Incorporating textures thoughtfully throughout your home enhances your design’s visual appeal, but also serves to make each room feel personalized. There are a number of key principles to follow when considering which textures to include in each room. These guidelines will help to inspire your choices, letting you create a design where you will love to spend time.

View of a kitchen

Enhancing Kitchen Designs with Texture

Kitchen designs offer plenty of opportunities to incorporate textures that enhance your space. Kitchens often follow a more neutral color palette, so textures are an ideal way to add depth to your design without deviating from this classic look. Carefully choose materials that balance the style and functional needs of your kitchen design, while giving your space more character.

Kitchen cabinets are often a starting point for a complete kitchen remodel and offer an ideal way to enhance your space with texture. Choose from a variety of finishes ranging from matte to glossy or distressed. If you are going for stained cabinets, letting the natural wood grains show through gives your kitchen a natural, grounded style. Distressed finishes tend to fit rustic or farmhouse kitchen styles, while glossy surfaces fit a more modern design aesthetic.

View of a kitchen

You can balance a wall of kitchen cabinets with a section of glass front cabinets, floating shelves, and other open storage. Glass front cabinets offer another opportunity to introduce texture with the glass itself, such as reeded glass doors. Clear glass doors allow the contents to take center stage, as displayed items introduce additional textures and color to your space. Similarly, floating shelves are an opportunity to include new textures ranging from reclaimed wood to sleek metal. You can also use this space to add decorative dishes, plants, vases, or woven baskets.

A Kitchen Island Countertop | kitchen and bathroom remodeling

Other design features work together with your cabinetry to create a combination of textures that is both functional and stylish. Backsplashes include options like natural stone, glossy glazed tiles, glass, or smooth slabs. Each offers a unique tactile experience and one-of-a-kind visual effects. For example, stone tiles give your kitchen design a rustic, earthy feel. Glossy, glazed tiles or glass backsplashes create a polished, reflective surface that bounces light around the room. A slab backsplash in quartz or granite blends with your countertop visually and continues a single-textured surface, contrasting with your cabinet textures even more pronounced. Similarly, countertops can range from smooth surfaces like quartz to more textured ones like leathered granite.

Metallic features are another way to bring textures into your kitchen remodel. Sinks, faucets, and cabinet hardware come in finishes ranging from polished to brushed, hammered, and matte. Each finish changes the look of your metallic features but also alters the way they feel. They create contrast with other surfaces, which adds a touch of sophistication to any design.

Accessories further enhance your kitchen design by adding unique textures throughout your room. From storage containers to plants, stylish light fixtures, and small decorative features, these items give your design personality. They can also be easily changed over time, meaning you can update your textures to fit your changing tastes.

Bringing Textures into Bathroom Designs

There are plenty of ways to include textures in a bathroom design, resulting in a space that feels luxurious, inviting, and visually appealing. Vanity cabinets, makeup vanities, and floating shelves provide similar choices for textures to kitchen cabinets, ranging from distressed finishes to sleek, glossy surfaces.

View of a bathroom

In bathroom designs, tiles are a key feature that covers floors, walls, shower enclosures, and bathtub surrounds. Textured tiles for walls and floors in bathrooms are a top choice that easily adds dimension to your design. Mosaic tiles like small hexagonal or penny round tiles let you create unique features that balance color, pattern, and texture in any space in your bathroom. They work especially well for a tile feature in a shower or as a vanity backsplash. Natural stone tiles bring an earthy, organic feel to a bath design, while pebble tile is ideal for a shower floor in a spa-style bath design. They look beautiful, give your bathroom a natural style, and feel amazing underfoot.

View of a bathroom

Fixtures and hardware like showerheads, faucets, tub fillers, cabinet hardware, towel bars, grab bars, and more all play a role in enhancing your bathroom design with texture. Choose from a range of finishes like brushed nickel, matte black, or polished brass to change the look of your room and the tactile experience for the bathroom’s user.  Even small items like robe hooks, towel bars, or grab bars can contribute to your room’s style and textural balance.

Depending on the bathroom you are remodeling and your tastes, other wall treatments can contribute to your bathroom’s textures. Shiplap or textured wallpaper, along with tile features, all enhance your room’s style and add textures that contrast with sleek surfaces like countertops. Accessories are another simple way to create an inviting environment in your bath design. Plush textiles like bathmats, towels, and robes introduce soft textures. Storage containers range from glass to metal, baskets, or wooden crates and serve double duty as functional and decorative accessories. Thoughtfully combining these elements in a bath design creates a style that is both sophisticated and cozy.

View of a bathroom

Transform Other Spaces with Textures

Textures can have a dramatic impact on the look and feel of many spaces in your home like living rooms, bedrooms, home offices, and even outdoor entertainment spaces. Consider your furniture selections in these rooms and how they work together to create spaces where you will love to spend time. Upholstered couches, leather chairs, and wooden coffee tables or desks all introduce different tactile experiences to your home. Layer soft textiles like throw pillows in a bedroom, blankets in a living room, and window treatments throughout your home to add warmth and comfort.

Floors and walls are key surfaces throughout your home that influence style and aesthetics. Hardwood floors, Luxury Vinyl Plank or Tile, and tiles in different materials and finishes all feel different underfoot, providing a smooth or textured surface. Combine this with area rugs that provide a soft surface that contrasts the hard floor materials. Wall coverings such as wallpaper or even a dramatic fireplace surround all enhance your home.

After view of a fireplace

Accessories complete the look and feel of your home design, including items that add another layer to your room’s textures. Vases, indoor plants, artwork, candles in decorative containers, and storage accessories all bring different textures to a home design, while some, like candles, also improve the fragrance of your room. Even in a home office, desktop accessories like pen holders, woven baskets, or ceramic containers help you stay organized and give your space a personal touch. In outdoor areas, textured cushions, woven furniture, and stone accents, along with outdoor plants and other landscaping features, make your outdoor living spaces feel just as thoughtfully designed as your indoor areas.

View of an outdoor kitchen

How Can Textures Transform Your Home Design?

Textures are an essential component of a complete home design, helping you to create a cohesive style that stimulates all the senses. Just like your favorite meal is more satisfying with nuanced flavors and combinations of textures, so a home design is more appealing when you layer different textures into a dynamic style. Thoughtfully combining key surfaces like wood cabinetry and sleek countertops with brushed metallic features and soft textiles, adds variety to your design. It also enhances the way you experience your home by breathing life into your rooms and stimulating the senses.

Our experienced team can help you find everything you need to create your ideal designs for your home. Contact us today to get started!