Apron for the kitchen, which one is better to choose?

An apron for the kitchen is a pro­tec­tive fin­ish on the wall sec­tion between the coun­ter­top and the bot­tom of the wall cab­i­nets. The require­ments for the appear­ance of the pan­el are high, because the area in which this dec­o­ra­tive part of the wall is locat­ed is con­stant­ly in sight and must be not only clean, but also beau­ti­ful. Pro­tec­tion is car­ried out from mate­ri­als that are resis­tant to high tem­per­a­tures and deter­gents, and there­fore are wide­ly used in the design of kitchens.

Why do you need an apron in the kitchen?

Every time dur­ing cook­ing, par­ti­cles of juice from fruits and veg­eta­bles, splash­es of water with deter­gent, fumes from pots get on the wall. From a series of clean­ings, the dec­o­ra­tion of the wall sec­tion adja­cent to the kitchen set quick­ly becomes unus­able. To pro­tect the place above the cut­ting table, stove, sink, use an apron for the kitchen.

It is dif­fi­cult to over­es­ti­mate the prac­ti­cal and aes­thet­ic sig­nif­i­cance of this sur­face in the inte­ri­or: it not only absorbs all the splash­es, but also dec­o­rates the inte­ri­or along with fur­ni­ture, room and win­dow dec­o­ra­tion. The design of this pro­tec­tive pan­el can visu­al­ly enlarge the space and enliv­en even the most bor­ing envi­ron­ment.

Finishing requirements: how to choose a practical and beautiful kitchen apron?

Any host­ess wants every­thing to be both con­ve­nient and beau­ti­ful in the cook­ing area, but not every­one is able to come up with a design for the room on their own. But even if you use the advice of fash­ion design­ers on how to choose an apron for the kitchen to equip your work­space, you should con­sid­er them in rela­tion to the exist­ing dimen­sions of the room and fur­ni­ture. If you do not cal­cu­late the size in advance, part of the wall may remain open, where splash­es will fall dur­ing cook­ing.

The dimen­sions of the pro­tec­tive pan­el for the wall are not stip­u­lat­ed by any GOST, the kitchen apron stan­dard is a con­di­tion­al val­ue, depend­ing on the dis­tance between the coun­ter­top and the low­er edges of the kitchen cab­i­nets (ranges from 45 to 65 cm) and on the length of the kitchen unit. There­fore, fur­ni­ture is first cho­sen, then the places where the parts of the kit will sub­se­quent­ly stand are deter­mined, mark­ings are applied to the wall, mea­sure­ments are tak­en and pro­ceed to the selec­tion of the pro­tec­tive pan­el.

When fig­ur­ing out how to choose the right apron for the work area, you should def­i­nite­ly take into account not only the size of the space between the coun­ter­top and wall cab­i­nets, but also the col­or scheme of the sit­u­a­tion: wall dec­o­ra­tion and fur­ni­ture facades are con­sid­ered in the com­plex. If the fur­ni­ture occu­pies the entire space and the walls are not vis­i­ble, its dec­o­ra­tion can be ignored. A lot depends on the design of the kitchen apron, so you need to imme­di­ate­ly decide whether it will be a bright col­or spot or, on the con­trary, will smooth out the sat­u­rat­ed col­ors of the kitchen set.

Optimal dimensions

Pro­tec­tive pan­els for the kitchen are posi­tioned so that they cov­er a small part of the wall behind the stove and work tables, and the coun­ter­top must over­lap them from below by at least 2 cm. The height of the pan­els depends on the place­ment of wall cab­i­nets. If in the select­ed set there are wall cab­i­nets and shelves of dif­fer­ent heights, the upper edge of the kitchen apron will have to be curly. It should go under the low­er edges of the cab­i­nets by at least 1 cm.

The area under the hood will require spe­cial atten­tion. The height of the apron for a giv­en sec­tion of the wall in the kitchen, if the hood is built into a wall cab­i­net, is cal­cu­lat­ed to the low­er lev­el of this cab­i­net. With a fire­place-type hood, the upper part of the apron is fin­ished at the lev­el of the upper edge of the wall cab­i­nets adja­cent to the hood. On the sides of the hood, the apron should go under the adja­cent cab­i­nets a lit­tle.

Design styles

Dec­o­rat­ing a room in the same style is a dif­fi­cult task. When decid­ing which apron for the kitchen is bet­ter to choose, it should be borne in mind that in any case it must be in har­mo­ny with the sur­round­ings of the room. The most com­mon­ly used styles are:

Color scheme for a kitchen apron

A well-cho­sen col­or of an apron for the kitchen can visu­al­ly increase the area of ​​the room if the walls and their pro­tec­tion are made in a light tone and the same col­or. The apron should be in har­mo­ny with the over­all col­or style, com­ple­ment­ing it, or focus­ing on indi­vid­ual details. Gen­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions are as fol­lows: bright col­ors of fur­ni­ture are muf­fled with light walls and an apron, a monot­o­nous set of light col­ors is enlivened with a bright apron and acces­sories:

1. The bright col­or of the back­splash is used for pas­tel facades and requires sup­port, expressed in acces­sories of the same col­or — fur­ni­ture han­dles, tow­els, kitchen uten­sils, dish­es, etc.
2. A neu­tral col­or means a shade dif­fer­ent from the facade of the kitchen set, a few tones dark­er or lighter. If the col­ors of the coun­ter­top and apron are the same, visu­al­ly every­thing will merge into a homo­ge­neous mass.
3. The con­trast­ing col­or of the pro­tec­tive screen is suit­able for a mono­chro­mat­ic inte­ri­or and makes even a typ­i­cal kitchen styl­ish. The col­or of the apron should con­trast with the col­or of the facades. Black and white, black and red, white and blue col­ors are great in this case. The accent­ed strip makes the room visu­al­ly high­er. If the fur­ni­ture is in the Mediter­ranean style, then for coral, choose a turquoise apron, dec­o­rat­ed with images of seascape ele­ments.

Varieties of kitchen aprons

The con­struc­tion mar­ket offers a wide range of pop­u­lar mate­ri­als for fin­ish­ing the work wall in the kitchen. But when decid­ing what mate­r­i­al the pro­tec­tive wall cladding will be made of, one should be guid­ed not only by per­son­al pref­er­ences, but also by the objec­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics of the pro­tec­tive pan­els and their com­bi­na­tion with the select­ed fur­ni­ture. You should con­sid­er how you will have to mount the pro­tec­tion on the wall: instal­la­tion, lay­ing, glu­ing.

Plastic panels

The bud­get option is a plas­tic apron. These cost-effec­tive pan­els allow any pho­to print­ing options, so the plas­tic pro­tec­tion can be with any pat­tern. Mount­ed by sim­ple glu­ing to the wall. But the dis­ad­van­tages of the mate­r­i­al out­weigh the advan­tages, because when heat­ed, it begins to deform, and the salts in tap water grad­u­al­ly cor­rode the plas­tic.

Ceramic tile

Hygien­ic mate­r­i­al of long-term use, dis­placed by oth­er mate­ri­als only because of the labo­ri­ous­ness in cladding and restora­tion of inter­me­di­ate seams.

The ceram­ic sur­face is not afraid of mois­ture and grease, tol­er­ates high tem­per­a­tures well, and is resis­tant to aggres­sive deter­gents. If you lay tiles in the kitchen, you can choose the fin­ish­ing options for any fur­ni­ture.

MDF panels

An easy-to-install bud­get option that remains com­bustible with any impreg­na­tion, but is more resis­tant to mois­ture than a mate­r­i­al made like lam­i­nate boards — lam­i­nat­ed fiber­board. Insen­si­tive to mois­ture and steam, only the lat­est gen­er­a­tion mate­r­i­al — MDF with acrylic pan­els. If you use it for wall cladding, it will come out not too cheap, but more durable.

Mosaic — a stylish option

In terms of ther­mal and mois­ture resis­tance, the mosa­ic is not infe­ri­or to ceram­ic tiles. It con­sists of small ele­ments, which, when laid, allows you to embody unbri­dled fan­tasies regard­ing col­ors and pat­terns. With the use of such mate­ri­als and types of aprons for the kitchen, much more can be done than with the use of sol­id plates.

Car­ing for a mosa­ic apron is dif­fi­cult due to the abun­dance of seams that make clean­ing dif­fi­cult. Lay­ing requires high pro­fes­sion­al­ism from the mas­ter, it costs more than lay­ing stan­dard ceram­ic tiles, it is car­ried out only on a pre-lev­eled sur­face and it slows down a lot if it is nec­es­sary to lay out a pat­tern.

glass panels

Often used in inte­ri­ors. This is due to the ver­sa­til­i­ty of glass dec­o­ra­tion meth­ods: the sur­face is made mono­phon­ic, mul­ti-col­ored, mat­te, repro­duc­tions are placed under it, glass can be dec­o­rat­ed with any images, draw­ings. A kind of glass apron is a mir­ror sur­face that visu­al­ly expands the kitchen space. Tem­pered glass is durable, not afraid of mois­ture and grease, it is dif­fi­cult to leave a scratch on it, when car­ing for it, you can use many deter­gents.

The sur­face of the glass back­splash for the kitchen is most often seam­less; under it, you do not need to first lev­el the wall. But it is prob­lem­at­ic to install such an apron with your own hands, since the glass sheet is heavy, and the work requires spe­cial skills.

Natural and artificial stone

It is not afraid of high tem­per­a­tures, shows excel­lent resis­tance to wear, looks impres­sive and pre­sentable. Dura­bil­i­ty sur­pass­es ceram­ic tiles. The most com­mon­ly used stone that can with­stand pol­ish­ing well is mar­ble, gran­ite, basalt. But if gran­ite belongs to low-porous mate­ri­als and is resis­tant to mois­ture, then mar­ble absorbs dyes well, it is not easy to get rid of stains.

For wall dec­o­ra­tion, both nat­ur­al stone and its arti­fi­cial coun­ter­parts, which are not much infe­ri­or in terms of heat resis­tance, are used, which are eas­i­er to install due to their low­er weight. Arti­fi­cial stones made of high-qual­i­ty mate­ri­als have low poros­i­ty, so mois­ture and dyes are almost not absorbed into them.

Steel aprons

Many inno­v­a­tive styles involve the use of met­al (steel, cop­per, brass, bronze, stain­less steel). The met­al apron is resis­tant to tem­per­a­tures, mechan­i­cal dam­age and mois­ture, serves the own­ers for a long time and is easy to install, but requires con­stant care. Any pol­lu­tion and even a trace of water become vis­i­ble. The steel sur­face must not only be wiped dry often, but also pol­ished with spe­cial nap­kins.