EACH WEEK, WE ask an Irish person with a passion for interiors to share one photo of their favourite spot in their home.
Emma Tighe has lived in Celbridge, Co Kildare with her husband and three children for 13 years.
“I love a classic Hamptons style, but I also really crave eclectic and boho styles too,” says Emma.
This week, Emma (@emmalovesinteriors) chatted us through her favourite spot: her breakfast bar in her kitchen.
It’s the heart of our home. Family dinners, homework and arguments – it all happens here. Everyone who comes to visit always gravitates towards the breakfast bar, plonks themselves down on a stool and we’re off!
A whole lot of the world’s problems have been solved here. On an interiors note, I simply love the colours in here. When the sun streams through in the evening, it bounces off the worktops and just naturally lights up the whole kitchen. It’s magical!
When we moved into our house, the kitchen was a usual Shaker-style wood brown – which was nice -, but I was always poring over pictures of Hampton-style kitchens, hankering after their white cabinets and their marble Carrera worktops with dark wood flooring.
After a few years we decided to go for it – on a budget though. So we just painted the original kitchen blue on the bottom and white on the top to keep the room light and bright. We had dark wood laminate floors put down, changed the handles on the cabinets to gold knobs, switched the original black worktop to an imitation marble laminate and voila, we had our own new Hamptons kitchen in Co Kildare!
In pride of place has to be our mini pantry, which I managed to convince my hubby we could do ourselves. Bar putting up shelves and putting together IKEA furniture, we hadn’t attempted anything like it before. I’m not too sure if we’ll ever do it again – divorce proceedings have now been averted! I am so delighted with what we achieved aesthetically and with more storage, it’s brilliantly functional too.
I adore my Carolyn Donnelly rug from Dunnes Stores which has the pops of colour I love and I think gives the kitchen the lift it needs. Another favourite object is the hanging plant. I love the colours the plant pot adds and plants themselves are another great addition to any room.
This photo is a really good reflection of the rest of our home as it’s a good example of what you can do on a budget and how strong classic colours mixed with some brighter pops of colour can really pull a room together. We have been living here for 13 years now and have knocked down a wall or two, but pretty much we have tried to paint and attempt some DIYs along the way ourselves.
I’m not going to lie here – there was a whole heap of tidying done before I took this photo. This could be just my house, but what is it with kitchen worktops being a magnet for basically any item in your house? All sorts of stuff just seems to gather there.
The pantry was lovely and styled when I took this photo, but a lot of jars, crisps and chocolate had to be relegated to the hall cupboard to achieve it!
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