Using Dark Metals in Your Home Design

by Rachel Lyon, Editorial Director for The House Designers

Accenting your space means utilizing numerous design elements in order to mix and match to style perfection. Paints, finishes, and lighting are the areas where people typically start when revamping their homes, but there are plenty of other media that you can employ. Metal accents come in many forms and colors, and familiarizing yourself with the options will help you utilize them to the fullest. Here are some ways to successfully incorporate darker metals into your home.

Warm Up Your Kitchen

There has been a shift away from stainless steel and chrome finishes on kitchen plumbing fixtures. While these light and shiny options will never go totally out of style, they have made room for darker finish choices that can pull your warmer, homey design scheme together. Oil-rubbed bronze is a popular option that looks gracefully aged, and antique, unpolished brass is also making a comeback. You can look into copper as well, in both bright and aged finishes.

With all these options, it might be hard to choose just one. And with so many places to use them, including faucets, cabinet hardware, and around appliances, the decisions probably seem mindboggling. There’s no reason to panic, though—mixing metals results in beautiful combinations. Rather than sticking together a hodgepodge of clashing finishes, choosing the individual elements to complement their backdrops creates a dynamic space with tasteful contrast. Darker metals look natural, so why shouldn’t they suit the variety of woods, tiles, or whatever else you have in your kitchen?

If you’re in the market for a new faucet, Pfister™ easily allows you to sort by finish and style to help find what will suit your kitchen. The options include Rustic Bronze, Tuscan Bronze, and Slate, all of which are rich colors with varying levels of warmth. The variety of faucet styles ensures that you’ll be able to optimize every feature of the fixture in order to come away with your perfect design.

Lighting Without Brightening

It seems counterintuitive that you could illuminate your home without making it inherently lighter, but you should be able to create a functional, lit space that doesn’t distract from the rest of your design. If you’ve focused on creating a darker, cozy home and don’t want to introduce a conspicuous piece of more standard, cooler hardware to detract from that, there are plenty of options out there that will complement your warm scheme.

Light fixtures also come in a variety of finishes, and each type of metal gives a specific mood to the light produced. Try to see this phenomenon in person in order to better gauge how your choices would affect your home. It’s very likely that you’ll choose different metals for different rooms. A warm, sleepy glow in the bedroom is perfect, but you’ll want another mood for your workspace.

Ceiling lights as well as a wide selection of table and floor lamps are available in bronze and other dark metals, so whether you install entirely new lighting fixtures or show off a few beautiful, independent pieces is all up to you.

Swap Hardware

If you aren’t currently building or doing renovations, there are still simple ways to incorporate dark metals into your home. With just a few small changes, you’ll be able to see how you like the warmer design, and best of all, you can make many of these changes all on your own.

Just like how you can switch cabinet knobs in your kitchen, you can also install new handles on dresser drawers and update your furniture to your liking. If you want to commit a little more, you can also change your doorknobs and hinges. Baldwin® is a great place to look for hardware because they offer knobs, levers, and other accessories in several brass, silver, and dark tone finishes.

Coordinate with Other Design Elements

There are plenty of places where warm accents are waiting to be made. These small alterations will take minimal effort on your part while giving a new, distinct vibe to your home.

Take a look at your window treatments, because they can drastically alter the overall look of your space. Consider an antique copper or pewter curtain rod, which will suit numerous fabrics and patterns, to introduce a hint of warmth around your windows. Natural light will glow around these finishes to make the room that much more inviting.

Think about how you might accessorize your home as another simple way to incorporate metals. Picture frames, magazine racks, book ends, vases, and other decorative items can all be easily purchased and placed in your home to your liking. These are a great way to get a taste of dark metals without committing to a major overhaul of your installed fixtures, and you can also experiment with which metals you like to mix in order to truly personalize your design.