Easy Summer Kitchen Ideas And Tour

Looking to refresh your kitchen for the summer season? Check out these 7 summer decorating ideas that will add a pop of color and style to your space.

Welcome to the season of sunshine, warmth, and garden flowers! Summer is the perfect time to infuse your kitchen with a fresh and inviting atmosphere that reflects the season at hand. Here are seven easy breezy ideas that will add a touch of summer charm to your kitchen.

Affiliate links included. See our Discloser Policy. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Welcome to our 2023 Summer Home Tour. A big thank you to Marty from A Stroll Thru Life for hosting our tour today. Marty is a grand dame in blogging circles with a sweet and generous heart! Please visit Marty and her home filled with beautiful season decor and “thrifty and chic finds.” Thanks, Marty, for including me in your amazing home tours!

I’m following Calypso In The Country on this tour, which is both an honor and a bit daunting! Shelly is so talented and a tough act to follow! Her lovely, traditionally styled home with a summery coastal twist is beautiful. And she graciously shares decorating ideas, easy home decor DIY, and more! I’m sure you got many ideas for Shelly’s tour.

Welcome all! This is Part 2 of my Summer Tour. You can see Part 1 Here.

We’ve thrown open our front door for both of our Summer tours. Look around and get ideas and inspiration for your home!

The kitchen is my favorite room in our home, so I saved it and a few other surprises for today’s tour. Summer is the time I want everything to be simplified, even in the kitchen. Simple but fresh and delicious meals, simple decor, simple entertaining, simple ways to keep things clean, and simply enjoying every minute in the kitchen this summer!

I thought you might like to tour our summer kitchen and get 7 easy kitchen summer decorating ideas too!

Clean, Organize And Simplify

The best kitchen decorating tip I can give you is to keep your kitchen clean and organized. Because no matter how nice your summer decor is, it won’t look nice in a messy kitchen!

It seems we entertain and have more family here at the Tanglewood House in the summer. When my home is full of people and noise and laughter, I am the happiest! So it’s important to me, and probably you too, that everything is clean and organized.

Here are a few simple tips for a clean and tidy kitchen…

When I use my kitchen, I clean everything right up. Nothing sits unless one of our grandchildren wants to play a game or the baby wants me to read him a book (sigh).

When I cook, I clean as I go! And when the kitchen closes for the night, I clean my sink. All the appliances in our kitchen are stainless steel, but we opted for a Blanco composite apron sink in truffle. It’s easy to clean and antibacterial. So when I wake up every morning, I have a nice clean sink to start the day! And starting my day with a clean kitchen is honestly better than any decor!

Even though I clean up everything as I cook, I still wipe down all my cabinets, counters, and appliances once a week. It does not take long, and it makes my kitchen look, smell, and feel so clean!

I also spend a few minutes a couple times a week organizing a kitchen drawer or cabinet. I learn this trick decades ago. I do the same with the rest of our home too! I spend 15 minutes a day organizing something.

I think there are three steps for keeping a kitchen organized.

One: Get everything organized in your kitchen.
Two: Always put everything back where it goes.
Three: Spend a little time cleaning, organizing, and refining your kitchen organization a couple times a week.

The first step you do once (or when things get out of hand). The second step is a habit you cultivate. And the third step is making sure things don’t get away from you ever again.

Clean And Organize Your Home- The Ultimate Guide is a huge post jammed packed with the best ways to keep your home in tip-top shape!

Less Is Best

I’m a less is best decorator. Our home is very open, so it looks better with less layering and less decor. In the summer, simple decor is best, with just a hint of the season incorporated in it!

I keep my knives in a crock with a kapoosh insert on a small cutting board. Next to the crock, I keep herbs I cut from my herb garden in a small mason jar.

Herbs are something I keep on my kitchen counters all summer long. The mason jar is near where I prep when I cook, so the cut herbs are a nod to summer and are used often. I count this as summer decor. Very simple and pretty.

Choose A Summer Color Palette

Whenever I decorate for a new season, I create a new color palette. It’s fun to choose a new color to celebrate a new season!

For summer, I added a bit of blue to our home’s neutral color palette. I love blue and white. However, our home does not! I’ve tried to add blue to our home several times, but it just never seems to work.

But this summer, I snuck a bit of this popular color into my summer kitchen!

In the kitchen, the way to add a pretty pop of color is with dishes. I have always been so partial to a stack of dishes! Here’s a little peek at some of the flowers I cut from containers and raised beds to bring inside to decorate.

Create Zones In Your Kitchen

My kitchen has designated zones. A prep zone and a coffee station zone, a cooking zone, a clean-up zone, and a zone for setting up drinks and a pop-up bar.

This is a really easy way to keep my kitchen uncluttered, organized, and tidy. And it’s also a great way to know where to add a bit of summer decor to the kitchen. In the areas I prep, cook and clean up, I keep summer decor down to a minimum.

There are 5 glass containers on the counter to the left of our stove. The large one holds flour for making bread. Artisan yeast bread is my favorite, but I like quick breads too. Make sure to check out my No-Knead, No-Starter, No-Mess 5-Minute A-Day Bread. and 5 Easy Quick Bread Recipes You Will Love.

The container holding split peas is just for pretty! I don’t like peas.

A blue and white pitcher filled with flowers from my gardens sits on a stack of blue and white dishes.

The left side of our long wall of cabinets and countertops is for our coffee station. Right now, it is set up as a self-serve continental breakfast station.

And on the right side of the same countertop is where we put our pop-up bar. When we are not entertaining and do not need a bar, I usually decorate this area. This summer, I put a cookbook on a stand.

We added something new to our kitchen this summer. A new zone of sorts!

We added a round table we used in the living room as a side table to a corner of the banquette. And a rug too! I really never wanted a table in this area. I thought it would make this part of the kitchen look crowded and cluttered.

We recently got birdfeeders and put them in our yard near the windows over our banquette. And have spent lots of time there watching the birds. I thought it might be nice to have a table to put my coffee, cookbooks, or computer on while enjoying all the bird antics going on outside the window. I remembered the round table down in the basement, so we brought it up to see how it would work and look. And it has stayed.

Then I got an inexpensive rug (it’s not worked out the folds in it yet) to put under the pedestal table. I’m not sure the rug will stay. I have my eye on another one I think will work better. We will see!

I sit at the banquette table every day with my 2nd cup of morning coffee and Bible study and watch the birds. And most afternoons, I grab my computer and work here. It’s amazing that such a small space would make a huge difference in my life. It’s wonderful!

Bring The Outside Indoors

One of the best ways to celebrate summer and decorate your kitchen for the season is to use flowers and herbs… liberally.

They are the gifts of the season!

This is such a beautiful time to bring the bounty of the outdoors inside! I’m a huge container gardener. I plant annuals, perennials, and herbs in containers and raised beds. It’s so easy to take care of my container gardens. Over the last couple of years, all but two of our regular planters are now self-watering. You can see Everything You Need To Know About Container Gardening and A Guide For Planting And Caring For Herbs.

The best summer decor is garden flowers.

Set Up A Coffee Bar

One of the zones in my kitchen is a coffee station. Like I said earlier, we get lots of company and family in the summer, so I set up a simple continental breakfast bar.

I’ve done this for years and years. It’s nice for company to come down for breakfast and get their own coffee and a little light nosh. Then I can take my time to get breakfast ready. I love leisurely mornings with family and friends.

I like to use cloth napkins, so I loosely fluff them in a coffee mug along with a spoon. This summer, I’ll serve in-season fruit and a coffee cake or other sweet breads. Today’s sweet treat is a mixed berry streusel sweet bread.

A summer breakfast bar could not be any sweeter seasonal decor!

Set A Default Summer Table

I have a group of friends that are amazing hosts! And I’ve gotten so many great tips from them.

Summer is the time to set an easy table, inside or out!

My friend Loretta sets what I call a summer default tablescape. She entertains a lot. It’s a ministry for her. And everyone who comes to her home feels so blessed!

She sets a table and, for a season, uses it over and over again as she has new groups of people to her home for a meal.

She plans dinners on two consecutive days of the week and makes the same menu. And she uses the same tablescape. After the first meal, everything gets washed and dried and put back on the table, fresh and ready for more company. What an easy summer idea!

So set a pretty and simple summer table and use it over and over again, indoors and out, when you entertain!

I hope these 7 summer kitchen decorating ideas will inspire you when decorating your kitchen.

Now, head over to My Wee Abode. Julie is a blogging friend turned real-life friend. Her blog has smart and savvy small space and apartment living solutions. And she is sharing her summer balcony refresh. LOVE it, Julie!