What is the Best Kitchen Splashback? Interior Designer Darren Palmer Shares His Thoughts

Designing a new kitchen comes with a million and one questions — and if you’re in the process or are thinking about updating your kitchen, chances are you’re wondering what is the best kitchen splashback?

Today we’re sharing Interior Designer Darren Palmer’s advice on the topic.

As a judge of The Block television series, Darren has seen more than his fair share of kitchen splashbacks and immediately knew the kind he doesn’t like…

“Glass splashback? Sorry but no,” laughs Darren.

He urges people to stay away from glass and coloured glass splashbacks, and instead embrace tiles.

It’s best to play with tiles — you can create more interest and they are easy to replace as you don’t have to waterproof behind a kitchen splashback.

There are thousands of tiles on the market so you could have fun with a cool print (Moroccan-inspired tiles are trending at the moment), pop of colour or unusual texture (such as an embossed tile). Subway tiles are inexpensive and proving to stand the test of time — you can even lay them on a 45 degree angle for a different look.

Tiles aren’t the only option available to you though. We’ve seen many contestants on The Block getting thumbs up for using mirrors (with the recent exception of Tim and Anastasia) — a clever design trick that can make the kitchen feel much larger and create the illusion of bringing the outdoors in.

Darren is also a fan of mirrors.

I love to use tempered mirror as a kitchen splashback.

In the photogallery of his design studio, Darren Palmer Interiors, you can find several examples of tempered mirror kitchen splashbacks including the Darling Point apartment.

If you’re using a stone kitchen bench, we suggest carrying the stone up as the splashback. This minimises the need to bring in another material which can look busy with natural stone.

On a recent tour of Interior Designer Greg Natale’s apartment, he used this trick combined with a mirror as his kitchen splash back — we love the cool angles and illusion of space it creates.

This trick of carrying the bench top up to the splashback also works well for stainless steel bench tops.

Did you find these kitchen splashback tips helpful? Check out the other posts in our series of tips from Darren Palmer.

Originally published as: https://stylecurator.com.au/what-is-the-best-kitchen-splashback-interior-designer-darren-palmer-shares-his-thoughts/