The kitchen is the centerpiece of the home. It’s where your family gathers for meals, and is always the busiest room at a party. Over the years, the kitchen sees a lot. That’s why when you are remodeling your kitchen, you want the design, and especially the kitchen cabinet design, to reflect your own personality.

Although cabinets can be made from many materials, they usually are made from wood. Typically, they are stained to reflect the wood grain from which they are made. These woods can range from a deep richly stained dark woods to light and airy bright stained woods. You can stain any wood any color, but the outcome will be quite different depending on the wood. So if you put a dark stain on a maple cabinet, it will look a bit different when applied to an oak cabinet.

Modern kitchens today are colorful and many are breaking with the traditional wood stain kitchen cabinet design and going with cabinets that scream with color. Choosing a bold color for the cabinets can make a statement in any kitchen. There are cabinets of deep blue or apple red to match everything else in the kitchen. A colorful kitchen is also a great answer for the problem of older cabinets that are showing their age due to heavy usage. Paint can work to hide the flaws and update these older cabinets.

Your drawer pulls and cabinet knobs are another thing to consider. This is what you’ll be opening and closing your cabinets with for years to come, as well as looking at when you enter the kitchen. Your options for this hardware are many. There are handles and pulls which will require two screws into the wood per cabinet. Long handles are great for long cabinets and drawers. If your cabinets and drawers are shorter, there are knobs and pulls to use with them also.

Pulls are usually mounted in the center of drawers, on the opening bottom side of cabinet doors on the ground and lower opening side of cabinets above the countertop. If you don’t want handles, you also have the option of knobs. If you only want to put 1 screwhole in the cabinets, the knobs are the way to go. On some cabinets, pulls look better, but on others knobs might be a better choice.

Cabinet hardware comes in all different styles and colors. When we think of traditional cabinet pulls, we picture bright gold, black or pewter colored hardware. Today’s consumer has a lot more to choose from. You can buy steel or themed knobs to match your kitchen. You can get knobs that are painted with pretty flowers and ones in whimsical shapes.

Today many people put a lot of money into remodeling their kitchens. Make sure your kitchen is an attractive and comfortable place to be. And your kitchen cabinet design will add to that comfort when you’ve put your own finishing touches on them.

Lee Dobbins writes for Look 4 Decor