Kitchen Wall Art: What to Hang Where the Kettle Lives

Think about how long you spend in the kitchen not really doing anything. Waiting for the kettle. Watching the toast. Stirring something that doesn’t need stirring. It is the room where you stand still most often, and where you look at the walls the most. And yet in most homes those walls are bare.

There are reasons, and they are fair ones. Steam, grease, splashes, the feeling that there’s no room between the cupboards. But a kitchen without anything on the walls feels like a showroom, and a kitchen with one good print feels like somebody lives there. Here is how to get it right, from where it goes to what it shows.

Yes, you can hang art in a kitchen, just not everywhere

Let’s get the worry out of the way first. Art and kitchens get along perfectly well, as long as you respect two things: heat and grease.

A good rule of thumb from framers is to keep prints at least 60 cm away from anything that steams, like the kettle or the sink, and at least 80 cm from the hob and the extractor hood. Directly above the hob is a firm no: that’s where the heat, the steam and the grease all rise to. Above the sink is a maybe at best. Splashes go further than you think, so a spot to one side is always better.

One honest note about frames. Glazing is not a seal. Grease and moisture can creep in around the edges of any frame, so what really protects a print is distance, not the frame itself. Our frames are glazed with acrylic rather than glass, which makes them light and means they won’t shatter if they get knocked off a shelf, a real plus in a busy kitchen. Keep them out of the splash zone and they’ll stay looking good for years.

And one thing almost nobody mentions: sunlight. Paper fades slowly and permanently, and a kitchen window is often the brightest spot in the house. Hang your print where it gets daylight, not a beam of direct sun.

Five places in a kitchen that actually work

The breakfast corner

If your kitchen has a small table, a bench or even a stool by the window, start there. It’s the calmest corner of the room, well away from the steam, and it’s where you sit with your coffee and actually look at things. Hang the print a little lower than you would elsewhere, because you’ll be looking at it sitting down.

The Usual was made for this spot: sunglasses, a coffee, a croissant, and the look of someone who has nowhere to be. It turns a corner with two chairs into your own café.

Above the counter

A long stretch of worktop with nothing above it is the classic kitchen wall. Hang the print 20 to 30 cm above the counter, or just above the splashback if you have one, so it belongs to the worktop rather than floating halfway up the wall. On a long run, one bold print does more than three small ones.

Fresh Pick looks like the sign above an old fruit shop, all stripes and stacked crates, and it brings that market cheerfulness to a counter where you chop your own lemons.

The narrow gap between cupboards

Almost every kitchen has one: that slim bit of wall between the tall unit and the window that nobody knows what to do with. It’s perfect for a single portrait print in 30 × 40 cm. A city works beautifully here, like Lisbon in Motion with its yellow tram, a little window onto somewhere else.

Leaning on an open shelf

Not every print needs a nail. If you have open shelves, lean a frame at the back and let the everyday things live in front of it: a jar of olive oil, a stack of bowls, a pot of basil. It looks relaxed, it’s easy to change, and it’s the easiest answer in a rented kitchen.

Two prints side by side on a shelf, like Among the Vines and Bon Appétit, read as a pair without any planning at all.

On top of the wall cabinets

If your top cupboards stop short of the ceiling, that gap is free wall. A large print leaning up there gives the whole kitchen a focal point, well out of reach of the steam, and it works especially well in kitchens with high ceilings.

What to hang: beyond cutlery and Live Laugh Love

Kitchen art has a reputation problem. Too many wooden forks, too many signs that tell you you’re in a kitchen. Here’s what works instead.

Food, the oldest kitchen subject there is

People have been hanging pictures of food next to their food for about four hundred years. In the seventeenth century, Dutch painters had a whole genre for it, the ontbijtje, which literally means “little breakfast”: bread, cheese, a half-finished glass of wine on a white tablecloth. Bon Appétit is the same idea with a modern appetite: figs, pomegranates, a jug of wine and the words themselves, tumbling across a blue checked cloth. Among the Vines takes the table outside, to a vineyard at the end of a long lunch.

The market stall

Old shop signs and market posters have always looked right in kitchens, because they’re about food without being precious about it. Fresh Pick belongs to that family: bright, graphic and a little bit loud, the way a good market is.

The places you ate in

The best food memories are tied to places. The coffee you had standing at a bar in Lisbon, the oranges at the market in Valencia, the blue tiles of every café in Porto. A city print in the kitchen is less a travel souvenir than a reminder of what you ate there. Valencia in Color shows the dome of the Central Market, Porto Grid is a wall of azulejos, and both look as if they were made to sit next to a fruit bowl.

Words, if they earn their place

Typography works in a kitchen when the words are something you would actually say at the table, or when the letters are treated as an image. What dates a kitchen is a sign that only explains what the room is for. If you love words on the wall, browse our typography prints and pick the one that sounds like your house.

Match the mood of your kitchen

Mediterranean, with terracotta, tiles and warm wood: lean into colour and sunshine. Porto Grid, Valencia in Color or Among the Vines in a natural wood frame.

Scandi, white and pale oak: one strong piece rather than many. The Usual in a natural wood frame, or Bon Appétit large and alone.

Cottage, with sage green cupboards and open shelves: Fresh Pick or Among the Vines leaning on a shelf, with plates and jars around them.

A small city flat: a single 30 × 40 cm print in the gap between cupboards, or one on a shelf. Small kitchens love one good thing more than several average ones.

And a quick word on colour. With green cupboards, reds and yellows sing. With blue ones, repeat the blue, or go for the yellow of a Lisbon tram. Against wood, a black frame stops the print from disappearing into the grain. And a white kitchen is the one place where any colour at all will do.

One print, a pair, or a little gallery?

Start with one. A single print in the right spot changes a kitchen more than you’d expect, and it tells you what you like before you buy more.

A pair is the natural next step, and it’s easiest when the two prints share something: a colour, a theme, a frame. The Usual and Bon Appétit work side by side because they’re both about the pleasure of sitting down to eat, one in a café and one at home.

A small gallery wall belongs around the kitchen table rather than above the counter, where it competes with the cupboards, the tiles and the kettle. Three or four prints in the same frame colour, with the same gap between them, turn an eating corner into the cosiest part of the house.

What rarely works is a scattering of small frames dotted around the room. Keep the art in one or two places and let the rest of the kitchen breathe.

A kitchen print makes a very good housewarming present

New kitchens are always bare. Everyone gives candles and wine; a print for the kitchen wall is the present that is still there in five years. Choose something about food or a city they love, go for 30 × 40 or 40 × 50 cm, which fits almost anywhere, and pick a natural wood or black frame so it arrives ready to hang. Not sure of their taste? A VEERY gift card lets them choose their own.

Size, height and keeping it clean

A few practical things, and then you’re ready.

• Size: in a small kitchen, 30 × 40 or 40 × 50 cm is plenty. On a long counter or above a table, go for 50 × 70 or 60 × 90 cm as a single piece. Above furniture, aim for about two thirds of its width.
• Height: 20 to 30 cm above the counter. Next to a table, centre the print around 145 cm from the floor, a little lower than you’d think, because people look at it sitting down.
• Always frame it. An unframed print in a kitchen picks up every splash.
• Cleaning: a dry microfibre cloth every month or two. If it needs more, spray a little ammonia-free cleaner onto the cloth, never onto the frame, so nothing creeps in at the edges. Skip the kitchen roll: it scratches acrylic.
• Before you drill: tape a sheet of paper the size of the frame to the wall and live with it for a day. Morning and evening light can change your mind.
• Renting? Lean prints on shelves, or use removable picture strips within their weight limit.

Not sure about sizes? Our art print size guide shows each one against real furniture. And if you’re planning more than one print around the kitchen table, our guide to planning a gallery wall has the measurements worked out.

Next time you’re standing there waiting for the kettle, look up. That’s where your print goes. When you’re ready, have a look at our prints for the kitchen and our food and drink prints.