A hygge kitchen is homely, welcoming, informal and doesn’t have to cost a fortune! Read on for 10 budget friendly tips to create a cosy hygge kitchen on a budget.
Is there a recurring theme in the images you have pinned? Maybe it’s a cosy corner with fairy lights or it could be a particular colour. Take note of what you’re drawn to and which aspects might be easily incorporated into your room.
If you want somewhere to start with your Pinspiration, have a look at the Bramble & Fox hygge Pinterest boards.
A Hyggekrog
A cosy corner, known by the Danes as a “hyggekrog” (hugh-gah crow) is the easiest way to invite hygge into your kitchen.
Every room has a natural place for a hyggekrog, you just need to look at where you naturally gravitate to in the space. It could be a window ledge, perfect for cosying up with a coffee on a damp and drizzly day, or it could be your kitchen table - my gloriously battered, rustic kitchen table was a £60 find from Shpock.
Emma Bridgewater perfectly sums up how a kitchen table is a natural place for people to hygge together, often becoming a place to cherish:
“Mum’s kitchen was always welcoming and a really fun place to be. The food she served up was quite delicious and it was all very relaxed; she never cared about numbers. There was plenty of cheap wine and late nights, sorting out the problems of the world around the kitchen table. I have lots of golden memories.”
To create your cosy corner, all you need to do is add some cushions, soft lighting, a blanket and a hot drink.
Books
Once you have a cosy corner in your kitchen, it becomes a natural place to spend time reading or leafing through your cookery books for recipe ideas. Give your books a simple, sturdy shelf as a home and maybe add a chalkboard next to it for easy meal planning or shopping lists.
Natural Textures
Worn wood, faded linens and rustic pottery bring warmth and informality to your kitchen. Cheap and easy ways to incorporate wooden textures into your kitchen are wooden chopping boards or a wooden bowl filled with lemons.
Rustic earthenware pots can used to store wooden spoons, vintage linen tea towels bring homely charm and butchers hooks hanging from a gnarled branch would make a natural peg rail.
Vintage and Handmade Items
Vintage and handmade items often have a soft, well-loved authenticity and warmth that is difficult to replicate.
As Meik Wiking, the author of ‘The Little Book of Hygge’ points out, “objects are more than their physical properties, they hold an emotional value and a story.”
Hygge can be evoked by the memories attached to belongings in your home, so choose to use and display items that hold memories, stories, secrets and love within them.
A Radio
A radio on a low volume can provide a soft, homely background soundtrack for pottering around your kitchen.
Soothing the stresses of the day away by peeling, chopping and stirring along to a radio interview or rolling out mince pie pastry to Christmas carols is sometimes all you need to feel cosy and safe.
Seasonal Displays
Celebrating nature is an important aspect of practising hygge, so create a sense of abundance and seasonality by decorating your space with flowers, scented herbs and houseplants.
Embrace the seasons through kitchen ingredients too – a china bowl of plums or an ironbark pumpkin on a dresser shelf evoke the beauty and generosity of Autumn in a simple, understated way.
Clever Storage
Relaxed informality is a key ingredient of hygge, so your kitchen doesn’t have to be Kondo-ed into submission, but you should take some time to plan out storage so that your space serves you well and you can appreciate the beauty of the room.
A messy kitchen is a stressful place to be. Pinterest is a great source of inspiration for cheap, clever storage hacks, so get pinning!
Hot Drinks Station
Hot drinks are what 86 percent of Danes associate most with hygge, coming out ahead of other quintessential elements, such as candles, fireplaces and Christmas.
Tea, hot chocolate and mulled wine all get the thumbs up, but according to Meik Wiking, the Danish drink of choice is coffee. Danes are the fourth biggest consumers of coffee, drinking a whopping 33 percent more per capita than Americans.
There is something undeniably cosy about cradling a cup of coffee in your hands, and a hot drinks station is an easy and budget-friendly way of inviting hygge into your kitchen and encouraging guests to make themselves at home.
Just pick a spot on a dresser, counter top or a freestanding island unit and gather together your favourite mugs, a teapot, cafetière or coffee machine and assemble your store cupboard stock.
Here are a few ideas for stocking your station, but amend your list to suit your needs:
- Loose leaf tea or tea bags
- Ground coffee or coffee beans
- Hot chocolate mix
- Cinnamon and/or nutmeg in small shaker containers
- Cinnamon sticks
- Small candy canes (to use as stirrers)
- Mini-marshmallows
- Chocolate shavings
Loved Ones
The most valuable ingredient of a hygge kitchen is loved ones to share it with!
So many of us (myself included) have been too bothered in the past by whether the house is tidy enough to enjoy last minute get togethers and if the Corona-virus pandemic has anything to teach us, it’s that sharing good times with good food and good people is so precious.
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