Don’t you love how metal finishes can awaken your room? While in the middle of redoing your kitchen, you made the colossal mistake of falling in love with some antique brass drawer pulls. The hardware is beautiful against your white kitchen cabinetry– but you absolutely loathe the idea of bronze faucets, bronze appliances, and bronze tableware. Even worse, perhaps you only have a handful of drawer pulls available – not nearly enough to affix every cabinet and drawer in your kitchen with an identical pull. Ultimately, you must make the heartbreaking decision to let go of those gorgeous bronze pulls in favor of a metal that will match the other metals in your kitchen, right?

Home Decor: How to Creatively Mix and Match Metal Finishes

Wrong. It is a common misconception that every metal in your kitchen should look identical. In fact, kitchen styles that mix metals are incredibly chic because by breaking supposed design rules, they look distinctive and fascinating. It is entirely possible to mix bronze and nickel, stainless steel and copper in a tasteful and attractive way – so you can keep those beautiful bronze drawer pulls and use different metal finishes elsewhere in your kitchen as long as you follow this guide to smart metal mixing. We love these metal finishes that mix and match metal finishes that mix and match from HGTV.

Choose Dominant Metal Finishes

Just as you must always choose a dominant color for a space, you must choose a dominant metal for your kitchen, as well as no more than two metal accents. Typically, the dominant metal will be that which is most prominent in the room, like the stainless-steel appliances or the oil-brushed bronze faucets; no matter where you look, you should catch a glimpse of your dominant choice. The metals you mix in should complement and supplement your main metal, either offering balance in tone or texture or carrying the motif further.

For example, if your kitchen is to be largely white and gold, you might add a gleaming silver chandelier for metallic equilibrium. Alternatively, if you have brushed nickel and stainless steel, you can match Italian pewter dinnerware to the cool, textured theme.

Select Your Metals Color Scheme

Metals are essentially colors, just with a bit more sparkle and shine. Therefore, before you make firm decisions on your kitchen’s metal finishes, you should have a solid plan for the room’s color scheme. Generally, warm metals (like gold, copper, and brass) go with warm colors, while cool metals (chrome and silver) go with cool colors. Meanwhile, in neutral-colored rooms, you should feel free to go wild with your metallic mixing and matching. You can even use metals to add more texture and temperature to a room, perhaps placing a copper lamp in a gray space or a nickel-framed mirror in a beige one.

One way to intelligently mix and match metals in your kitchen is by varying the color of your cabinets. For example, white cabinets in a kitchen island can boast oil-brushed bronze fixtures while black wall cabinets use brushed-nickel knobs and pulls. You can manipulate the colors around your metals to make them flow with the rest of the room.

Mix Warm and Cold Metals

If you thought it was a sin to mix and match metals in your kitchen, you probably believe mixing warm and cold metals is akin to blasphemy. In truth, using just one metal in a space is monochromatic and boring, and using a single metal temperature in a large kitchen is equally dull. Instead of worrying about precise matching, you should be thinking about interior design in terms of harmonizing – different tones working together to make beautiful music. If your space is large enough, and your color scheme permits it, you should seriously consider integrating warm and cold metals in your kitchen.

Remember to Use Textural Metal Finishes

Unlike flat color, metals tend to add a variety of textures to your space. For example, nickel and bronze hardware tend to have a matte, brushed grain, whereas gold and chrome are glossy and spotless – unless you forget to polish them. While you are surveying different metal finishes for your kitchen, you should keep in mind your texture options to create a rich atmosphere for the eye and fingertips.

Add Neutral Metal Finishes and Tones

In this post, we’ve written much about opposing types of metal finishes and when to use them, but there is one underused metal that serves as a neutral in almost every space: Iron. Iron is neither warm nor cool, and it comes it a variety of textures to suit any kitchen style. If you feel uncertain about mixing and matching more assertive metals, you should feel confident adding iron to any room because iron doesn’t clash with any metal. In fact, iron only serves to make other metals pop, giving them more color and temperature by contrast. Iron remains the hardest working metal – at least for decorators.

For more ideas for your kitchen cabinetry, see our archives!