9 Stunning Southern Kitchens That'll Inspire Your Renovation

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Southern kitchens come in many shapes, sizes, and styles. This diverse area of the country is often pigeonholed, with the rest of the world (including most of the U.S.) imagining cavernous antebellum plantation homes and old West ranches. In reality, the South is diverse and varied, and many Southern designers are finding beauty in building functional spaces from Florida to West Texas. 

If your kitchen is in need of a remodel, then looking to the South is a great way to find inspiration. With some of the fastest population growth in the U.S., Southern trends are ever-changing, so there's something for everyone here, from ultra-modern to the kind of classic touches that effortlessly bring class to any design.

This kitchen, designed by @southerngraceinteriors in Charleston, South Carolina, mixes modernity and classic low country style. As this is a historic home, the designer makes the most of the various rustic textures inherent in a house of this age, setting them against modern fittings so that both stand out. In the kitchen, a brick wall contrasts with the cleanliness and simplicity of high-quality white cabinets and modern accessories.

If you live in an older home, this is a great way to make the most of its character while keeping your kitchen modern, practical, and very firmly rooted in the best of current design trends. If you don't have a brick wall, consider what else you might have. It could be a beautiful wooden floor that just needs a little love, antique window frames, or ceiling beams. You can up the vintage charm easily with little things like antique furniture, arranging your clutter as a feature rather than a bug, installing a farmhouse sink and classic fittings, or choosing retro kitchen items when you're adding the finishing touches to your new space.

Another design from @Southerngraceinteriors, this kitchen and entryway embrace the traditions of South Carolina's low country. It uses beautiful light-blue painted touches to bring unity to an awkward space, making the hallway and the kitchen feel connected and keeping the whole area bright and lively. The matching warm wood on the floors and ceilings leads naturally from the door or the stairs into the kitchen-dining room, literally welcoming visitors into the space. The wood isn't a single color on the floor or the ceiling, so it feels natural and soft. 

As is evident from this design, you don't need super high ceilings to make an idea like this work. It's a small touch that could really make a farmhouse-style kitchen unique, and you could achieve it in your own kitchen using cladding panels like these from HXUHUWS, available on Amazon.

Your cabinets can be the main feature of the kitchen if you plan your space carefully. It might feel like colorful cabinetry is a '70s design trend, but it's definitely coming back! Be bold and choose an original, bright, and warm color, and good cabinets can carry a whole design. You can choose modern, flush cabinetry that reaches the ceiling, like this kitchen by @color.genie and @cgsdesignbuild.

The Austin, Texas, kitchen is a large open-plan space that leads out to the garden, and the block colors help to divide it up. This is something you can achieve in homes of any size, including smaller historic townhouses. Careful use of color can make large spaces feel cozy or help break them up, and it can also make smaller spaces feel much larger. Consider where you're using color, as well as which colors you're using, if you want to transform your kitchen completely. Your options are endless; there's no need to stick to walls. Consider colors for cabinets, furniture, your floors, and your ceilings, as these are all part of your design. 

In this mid-century Alabama mansion, maximalism highlights the "modern" in mid-century modern. Using a huge variety of colors and textures, @danidazey pulls no punches in the kitchen. The dining nook is defined by pattern, while a mixture of vintage fittings and appliances with toned-down modern cabinetry helps reduce the volume just when you need to hear yourself think. 

While this style is often used in older houses, and certainly fits with vintage kitchen designs, maximalism can bring out the best in modern homes, too. Big, open-plan kitchen-dining rooms offer a lot of space to play, so why not try saying "and" instead of "or" when it comes to kitchen design ideas?

In this kitchen by @deeplysouthernhome, various white tones are mixed with bold monochrome touches to open up a smaller, uniformly shaped kitchen. Along with some hidden appliances and careful spatial planning that allows counter space to be maximized, the light colors make the room feel expansive despite its size. It's light and bright without being boring, and like many of these southern kitchens, it blends modernity and tradition, combining subway tiles with wooden cabinets and black metal sconces. 

Finally, bold monochrome touches bring surprise and style to the design, with the chessboard linoleum floor particularly striking. You can find similar floor tiles on Amazon, and many are even peel-and-stick, so you can make changes later on. These geometric-patterned tiles from FloorPops are particularly striking and fit with a monochrome theme. Finally, with white cabinets like these, you could also consider a subtle paint color for your walls to add interest, particularly if a feature floor isn't for you.

Homes in the Southern USA often boast large kitchens. There are a few reasons for this. According to Foyr, on average, multilevel homes in the West South Central region have the largest kitchens of all, at an average of 184 square meters. There's also the simple fact that house prices tend to be lower in much of the South when compared to the Northeast or the West Coast, so a middle-class family can simply get more bang for their buck. This is one of the reasons large kitchen islands are so common in Southern homes. They feature in a ton of these inspiring designs. 

This one, in a home designed by @kristenruhe, is a great example of how islands can be a feature. Modern and seamless, it contrasts with the bespoke metal stove hood and wooden floor. Importantly, however, it's also practical, housing the sink. This, specifically, is a great way to create a 360-degree cooking area that can be shared with ease, and it lets you keep an eye on the kids while you're washing up, too.

If this design from @michaelmitchelldesigner teaches us anything, it's that we should never be afraid of patterns. Even if you're combining it with dark wood or more traditional cabinetry and design, patterned wallpaper might just take your kitchen from homely and historic to designer chic. And you don't need loads of space to pull it off, either. The idea that patterns or bright colors will make a room feel smaller is a total myth! Boldness and busyness can actually make a space feel bigger, because there's just so much to look at. 

Here, we see modern touches bringing the kitchen of an old home to life, while antique pieces bring balance and a lived-in feel to the space. A feature wall can work in kitchens of all kinds, and with peel-and-stick wallpaper, you can experiment at home to see what works for you. Likewise, if you have a few antiques at home, try moving them around. Perhaps something unexpected will work wonders in your kitchen.  

Big islands don't have to be ultra-modern, and they don't have to be shy either. Choose a bright color to bring excitement to the middle of your kitchen, and a color here can be echoed in small touches throughout the room or dining space, just as blue is threaded through this design by @designinteriorsouth. Whether you're renovating a kitchen, redesigning a dining room, or making changes in another part of your home, it's always good to remember the 60/30/10 rule. 

Choose a dominant color and use it 60% of the time, a secondary color that you'll use 30% of the time, including for feature walls, large pieces of furniture, or a kitchen island, and then an accent color for that final 10%. The accent color will work well in decorations or art. You might use it for light fittings, sink fixtures, or the hardware of your cabinets.

A strong vein of originality runs through these Southern kitchens, often characterised by the use of unusual materials. From creative kitchen backsplashes to entire walls of marble or stone, there are plenty of ways to inject personality into a kitchen while remaining completely committed to practicality. This space from @southerngraceinteriors uses "tabby", a historic material made from a mixture of concrete and crushed, burnt oyster shells. 

Tabby has long been important in the South, with roots in both West African and Native American architecture, but you could use a material that has roots where you live. It will make your kitchen part of a longer story and should allow you to source materials locally.