DesigningOrland.com

Since stainless steel appliances became all the rage, home builders and home owners alike have matched their kitchen cabinet hinges and pulls with satin-finish chrome or nickel to match or blend with the stainless steel. In addition, most bathrooms have shiny chrome fixtures throughout. Your hinges don’t have to match your appliances to look stylish, and chrome isn’t the only color bathroom fixtures come in. Mix it up!

Copper is a favorite metal for use in the kitchen. It comes in a variety of finishes and looks great with stainless steel. Copper goes beautifully with both warm and cool color schemes. Keep the stainless steel appliances and copper hinges in mind with both of these color schemes:

1) terra cotta floors, aged sage green cabinets with granite countertops or

2) slate floors, dove gray cabinets with marble countertops.

Depending on the style and finish you choose, copper fixtures can compliment most any kitchen.

Brass is an excellent choice for cabinet hinges and knobs in living rooms and dens. It brightens up the room and probably already matches a few things in those rooms. If you have a collection of old brass doorknobs, see how antique-finish brass fixtures help draw the eye to the doorknobs. If it’s shiny brass candlesticks you have, try mimicking the basic shape of the candlesticks in the hinge plate shape. However, don’t go overboard with brass everywhere. You will lose the effect of a few complimentary pieces.

For bathrooms, a good change of pace is nickel or pewter, though brass can look very classy in a bathroom as well. Color scheme makes a big difference. My one hint for bathrooms is to pick a metal that you can get in every fixture and piece of hardware you want, from towel holder to cabinet hinge. Bathrooms are usually too small to do a lot of metal color mixing, but I do think you can sometimes mix finishes if you feel it looks too match-y.

Choosing fixtures for your home can be daunting. Here are some basic tips that may be useful in deciding the metal and finish for your rooms:

• Look at the items that you already have in that room. Do you have a lamp you love in your living room? Do you have several copper pots in your kitchen? Do you have a beautiful brass étagère that you keep your towels on in the bathroom? Each of those items can inspire the metal fixtures in that room. Take pictures of your stuff you like and print them out for a reference folder. Keep them handy as you browse the Internet or your local hardware or home improvement store.

• Find mixed-metal items to combine rooms that seem equally divided between two metals. One or two will be plenty for most rooms. Alternatively, more subtly, merge the color scheme with similar woods or wood finishes. For example: oak and cherry for brass and copper.

• Even fabrics can highlight metal fixtures in the room. Picture light sunshine yellow pillows on a denim sofa in a white and pale blue room with satin-finish brass cabinet hinges, doorknobs, and curtain rods. The pillow fabric and the satin brass fixtures accent each other.

Above all, trust your eye. It’s your home; it should make you happy. Do with it what you want. You are the one who has to live in it and look at it every day. And really, do you want a friend that won’t visit because you have weird taste in door hinges?

Author Jennifer Akre is an owner of a wide variety of online specialty shops that offer both products and information on how you can easily furnish and decorate your space. Whether it’s your living, bedroom, or even your deck or patio, there are many tips you can use to make your space both functional and beautiful. Today, she offers advice on how to create a fabulous indoor area by using concealed cabinet hinges, durable door hinges and self-closing hinges.