Style Your Kitchen Like Joanna Gaines With The Old-School Essential She Swears By

Styling your kitchen should be fun and engaging. This room may be one of the more functional areas of your home, but that doesn't mean it can't be cozy. In fact, as a big hub for eating, gathering, and spending time socializing, kitchens are becoming much more than just meal prep spaces. No one knows this more than Joanna Gaines, who has hundreds of tips to style a home and especially a cooking area. While she shares many different ideas on her social media to create a unique and luxurious aesthetic, one addition incorporates a vintage flair that will level up your tables, countertops, or even your shelves: vintage blue and white dishes. The best part is, you don't have to spend a lot of money on these because Gaines' loves using blue and white dishware that you can collect from secondhand shops and thrift stores. Gaines stresses the fact that these should be mismatched, as it creates more visual interest.

In a recent post on Instagram, Gaines says that "blue and white vintage dishware, mismatched, is a dream come true." She shows a collection of vintage plates in a stack, before showcasing how she has styled them on her wooden dining table, complete with blue and white cups and saucers. These old-school essentials are among the vintage dishware items you should look for at thrift stores. You can style them alongside crisp linens and vintage cutlery, or even as decor pieces, giving a cozy, yet stylish, cottage effect.

As one of the decor pieces Joanna Gaines loves using in the kitchen, antique dishware is such an easy addition that makes a big statement. Whether you're an avid thrifter or just want to recreate Gaines' style, start checking every time you go to secondhand stores for any blue and white dishware they have. What really sets Gaines' recommendation apart from just buying a standard china set is that every plate is unique and mismatched on purpose. This gives the table or surface they are on dimension, contributing even more design and prints or patterns for a unique layout. In her video, Gaines explains that she loves how you can get so "many different variations from different time periods."

It doesn't matter if you have a big table in an open concept kitchen or an island — you can lay out your various plates together for a vintage finish that you can elevate with white linens and brass cutlery for a really warm aesthetic. The blue of the plates is soothing and provides a pop of color without being too overwhelming. Gaines paired her plates with an oversized ceramic pot and greenery as the centerpiece, but you can really make them work with almost any color palette and material. In fact, adding pops of color is one way Joanna Gaines packs character into an all-white kitchen that needs a little refresh.

It's not just mismatched patterns but also various sizes that could really elevate this decorating hack. While you definitely want to have larger plates to eat off, it could be helpful to also purchase smaller saucers and side plates for big table setups. Consider searching for plates with different edges, such as scalloped or raised textures. Again, it's all about complementing each piece with various other dishware items that are similar but not the same. Color can also make a small kitchen seem bigger, and the blues of the dishware aren't so dark as to bring any heaviness to your room.

When you're not using them, you could add a rail to a shelf and display your plates on their edges to continue to use them as decor and color within the kitchen. You could also use plate hangers to hang some on the wall instead of art, incorporating these pieces everywhere from tables to countertops to shelves and walls. The next time you want to upgrade your kitchen, just pop to a thrift store and get a whole new aesthetic on a budget and thank Joanna Gaines for her clever tip!