Click here to see our funny kitchen collection. 

Why do we seem perfectly happy to have a bit of fun with decorating almost every room in the house, but the kitchen?

Living rooms get interesting paintings. Bedrooms get whatever makes us happy. Bathrooms have somehow become the unofficial home of mildly inappropriate signs. Yet kitchens are still expected to make do with pictures of herbs, the occasional lemon and something telling us that the secret ingredient is love. (Personally, I think the secret ingredient is usually butter, garlic or cheese.)

I also think kitchens are one of the best places in the house for funny wall art. They're full of everyday chaos and conversations that probably shouldn't happen in front of the children. So why shouldn't the artwork reflect some of that?

When I started creating my own collection of kitchen art prints at Kauter Studios, I wanted something a little different from the usual perfectly arranged bowls of fruit. I wanted bright colours, recognisable food, a bit of personality and, sometimes, something thoroughly inappropriate written across the top.

A beautifully painted chilli is lovely. A beautifully painted chilli telling you to fuck around and find out is better.

Why Funny Kitchen Wall Art Actually Works

There's something about putting a funny print in an otherwise ordinary setting that makes me happy.

Imagine walking into a lovely, freshly decorated kitchen. The cupboards are immaculate, the worktops are tidy, there's a beautiful vase of flowers on the island and everything looks as though someone has spent a considerable amount of money making it appear effortlessly stylish.

Then you notice a framed painting of a lemon that says "Sour Little Bitch". That's immediately more interesting to me than another motivational quote about living, laughing, or loving.

Humour gives a home character. It tells you something about the people who live there without requiring anyone to give you a guided tour of their personality. You can have a sophisticated kitchen and still find rude jokes funny. You can appreciate beautiful art and also appreciate a vegetable pun. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

I think that's partly why quirky kitchen wall art appeals to me so much. It lets you introduce something unexpected without having to completely redecorate.

You don't need a particularly unusual kitchen to make it work, either. Funny food prints can look brilliant against traditional shaker cupboards, modern handleless units, country kitchens or the sort of rented kitchen where your main decorating ambition is to distract people from the flooring.

And that's the lovely thing about art. It gives you a way to make a space yours, even when you can't change much else.

1. Funny Vegetable Prints

Vegetables have absolutely no business being as funny as they are.

I appreciate that probably sounds ridiculous, but when you start thinking about food puns, vegetables provide an almost endless supply of material.

Take chillies, for example.

They're colourful, instantly recognisable and already associated with being hot, spicy and occasionally a terrible decision. They're practically asking to have something inappropriate written about them.

Some of my favourite chilli print ideas include:

• "Hot Mess"

• "Shit Just Got Spicy"

• "Zero Chill"

• "Spicy Little Bitch"

• "Mild Is for Cowards"

What I particularly like about these is that they're not just jokes about food. They're also things you might say about yourself, your friends or the general state of your life.

"Hot Mess" is technically about a chilli, but I suspect quite a lot of us could relate to it on a personal level.

My chilli artwork uses bold colour and a deliberately simple composition because I want the food itself to look good before you even get to the words. There's no point making a joke print that only works when someone stands close enough to read it.

The same goes for tomatoes. A lovely bunch of bright red tomatoes against a contrasting background can make attractive contemporary kitchen wall art without any lettering whatsoever. But, add a suitable phrase and suddenly you've got something with a completely different personality.

For me, the sweet spot is when the artwork could stand on its own as a decorative print, but the wording makes someone look twice.

2. Fruit Wall Art 

If vegetables are funny, fruit is arguably worse. Lemons are particularly good because they can be cheerful, miserable, sarcastic or outright offensive depending on what you write.

"Squeeze the Day" is the sort of cheerful kitchen pun that could happily live in your nan's kitchen. "Sour Little Bitch", probably less so. Although, to be fair, that depends entirely on your nan.

I love that you can take essentially the same subject and turn it into two completely different pieces of artwork. One is a light-hearted kitchen print. The other is a rude kitchen print for someone who has absolutely no interest in pretending they're delightful before their morning coffee.

Bananas are another excellent subject. They're such ordinary objects, and yet they somehow lend themselves to all sorts of rather questionable humour.

Visually, they're also brilliant to paint. The curved shape, yellow skin and subtle changes in colour give you enough to work with without making the composition overly complicated.

And I think that's important for food-themed wall art. Sometimes the simplest subjects make the strongest pictures. A single banana, avocado or lemon can have much more impact than a complicated arrangement of twenty different fruits fighting for attention. I've always liked art that has a little confidence about it. Something that doesn't need to fill every corner of the canvas just because the space is there.

If you're choosing funny fruit prints for your kitchen, I'd think about whether you want the artwork to be mainly decorative or whether the joke is the whole point. Both are perfectly valid reasons to buy art. Sometimes you want something beautiful to look at. Sometimes you want something that makes you laugh every time you boil the kettle. Ideally, you get both.

3. Rude Kitchen Wall Art for People Who Don't Do Inspirational Quotes

I don't have anything against positive thinking in principle. I just don't particularly want to be encouraged to manifest abundance while I'm standing in my kitchen eating grated cheese directly from the packet.

Sometimes a rude print feels considerably more appropriate. And rude kitchen wall art doesn't necessarily mean filling every available wall with swear words. A single slightly offensive print can be much funnier than an entire kitchen screaming obscenities at you. It's all about the contrast.

Something beautifully illustrated, carefully framed and hung in a lovely kitchen becomes particularly entertaining when you realise it says something completely inappropriate. I find that much funnier than artwork designed to look aggressively rude from the outset. It's the same reason swearing is often funniest when you least expect it.

A gorgeous lemon print with delicate shading and the words "Not Bitter, Just a Cunt" is a very different experience from a giant novelty sign shouting the same thing.

One feels like a little discovery. The other may make you feel as though you've wandered into a particularly argumentative pub toilet. There's room for both in the world, obviously. I just know which approach I'd rather paint.

For my own kitchen collection, I wanted the illustrations to feel like proper artwork first. The jokes are part of the finished piece, but I don't want them to be an excuse for something that looks as though it was thrown together in five minutes.

If you're searching for sweary kitchen prints or adult humour wall art, my advice is to look for designs you'd genuinely like even without the rude wording. Because there's a difference between buying something because it's funny once and buying something you'll still enjoy looking at in six months.

4. Food Prints Without Words Can Be Just as Much Fun

One thing I didn't want when creating my kitchen collection was to make every painting dependent on a joke.

Sometimes I just want to paint a tomato. Not because tomatoes represent the fragility of modern existence, or because I'm making a clever political statement about the agricultural industry. Just because they're red, shiny, interesting to paint and look lovely against the right background.

Not everything needs a deeper meaning. That's why I also like kitchen art prints without text. A colourful illustration of a fried egg, a jar of pickles or a bunch of chillies can be a lovely addition to a kitchen without requiring anyone to read anything. Food illustration has a wonderful ability to feel both familiar and slightly nostalgic. A fried egg might remind you of Sunday breakfasts. A jar of pickles might remind you of something your grandparents always had in the cupboard. Or perhaps you just really like pickles. That's reason enough.

I think people sometimes put unnecessary pressure on themselves when choosing artwork. They want it to mean something profound, match every surface in the room and somehow demonstrate excellent taste to every visitor. You're allowed to buy a painting because you like the look of an avocado. In fact, I'd actively encourage it. For anyone who likes colourful contemporary food art but doesn't want words on the walls, my original food paintings and kitchen prints are a good place to start. You get the colours, shapes and personality without any risk of having to explain a swear word to your mother-in-law.

5. Build a Kitchen Gallery Wall That Looks Collected, Not Calculated

I absolutely love the idea of a kitchen gallery wall, particularly when it feels as though someone has gradually collected things they genuinely enjoy rather than bought a matching set because an interiors website told them to. There is something wonderfully personal about an arrangement of pictures that shouldn't necessarily work together but somehow does.

You might have a vintage food illustration next to a contemporary chilli print, a little painting you bought on holiday and something utterly ridiculous involving an egg. That sounds much more appealing to me than six identical pictures of beige pears. The trick, I think, is to have something connecting the pieces without making them all identical. It might be the colour palette, the frames, the subject matter or simply the fact that everything has a slightly mischievous sense of humour.

For example, you could build a colourful kitchen gallery wall around red tomatoes, yellow lemons and green avocados. Those colours can work together beautifully, particularly against pale walls. Alternatively, you could choose several cheeky food prints and let the words connect them.

I'd probably resist the temptation to include every rude print in one small space. Not because there's anything wrong with a bit of swearing, but because when everything is competing to be the funniest thing on the wall, none of it gets much attention. A mixture of illustrated food art and one or two rude pieces can create a better balance. And please don't feel that everything needs to be perfectly symmetrical.

Some of the most interesting gallery walls are a little irregular. Different frame sizes, varying gaps and unexpected subjects can make a room feel more like a real home and less like a furniture showroom. Obviously, there is a fine line between charmingly mismatched and looking as though someone has thrown pictures at the wall during an argument. But I think that line is worth exploring.

6. Small Kitchen? You Can Still Have Interesting Art

One of the things I really like about art prints is that you don't need an enormous house to enjoy them. In fact, smaller kitchens can be particularly good places for a bold little piece of artwork. If you've only got a narrow section of wall beside the fridge, you probably don't want a giant canvas taking over the entire space.

A smaller framed print can do the job perfectly well. A5 prints are particularly useful for little corners, while A4 can work when you've got a bit more wall to play with. I offer my kitchen prints in A5 and A4 because I wanted them to be suitable for actual homes, rather than only enormous kitchens with islands the size of small aircraft carriers. A small print tucked beside a shelf can be a lovely surprise. A larger colourful piece above a breakfast table can become a proper focal point. I also think it's worth looking at the spaces we tend to ignore.

The little wall beside a pantry door. The awkward gap between cupboards. The end of a kitchen unit that faces the dining area. They're not necessarily places you'd think to hang art, but that's often what makes them interesting. Of course, kitchen artwork needs a bit of common sense when it comes to placement.

I wouldn't put an unprotected paper print directly beside a hob where it's going to be regularly attacked by steam and flying spaghetti sauce. A frame with glazing can help protect prints, and a position away from direct splashes and intense heat is usually a better idea.

There's nothing particularly glamorous about practical considerations, but I'd rather you enjoy your print for years than discover it has slowly become part of the backsplash.

7. Funny Kitchen Prints Make Brilliant Gifts.

Buying artwork for someone else can be a bit of a gamble. Taste is personal, and what one person considers a beautiful contemporary print, another person considers something that should never have escaped an art classroom. But funny kitchen wall art does have one advantage. If you know someone's sense of humour, you've already got a pretty good starting point. A friend who constantly describes herself as a hot mess might love a chilli print saying exactly that.

Someone who's always making terrible food puns might appreciate a lemon telling them to squeeze the day. And there's almost certainly someone in your life who would proudly hang "Not Bitter, Just a Cunt" in their kitchen. Although I would recommend being reasonably confident about that before wrapping it up for Christmas. The thing I like about giving art as a present is that it feels more personal than another generic kitchen accessory. You're choosing something that makes you think of that person. Their humour, their favourite foods or something they've said a thousand times. A funny kitchen print could make a lovely housewarming present, birthday gift or little treat for someone who's just redecorated. Personally, I'd be delighted if someone bought me a painting of a vegetable because it reminded them of my personality. Depending on the vegetable.

8. Don't Be Afraid of Colour in Your Kitchen Artwork

We spend so much time trying to make our homes feel calm and coordinated that sometimes we forget they're allowed to be fun. I love colour in artwork, particularly strong reds, yellows, greens and blues. Food is a brilliant subject because nature has already done most of the colour planning for us. Tomatoes are an extraordinary shade of red when you really look at them. Lemons aren't just yellow, they're full of warmer golden tones and cooler shadows. Avocados have all those lovely variations of green, while chillies can range from deep crimson to bright orange.

When I'm painting them, I'm interested in those changes of colour and the way light gives an ordinary object its shape. That's part of what makes the finished artwork satisfying for me. I don't want a tomato to look like a flat red circle with a stalk attached. I want it to have enough depth and detail to feel like something I've properly painted. But I also don't want it to become so realistic that it loses the playful illustrative style I enjoy. It's a balancing act.

In a kitchen, colourful prints can give you an opportunity to introduce shades you wouldn't necessarily commit to in permanent fittings. You might not want bright red cupboards, for example, but a bold tomato print against a pale wall can be fantastic. And if you decide in a few years that you fancy changing things around, it's considerably easier to move a picture than replace an entire kitchen. Which is probably for the best, considering the price of kitchens.

9. Choose Art That Makes You Smile

This is probably the most important thing I could say about choosing kitchen wall decor, and it applies just as much to the rest of your home. You don't need permission to like something. You don't need to know anything about art movements, colour theory or what happens to be fashionable this year.

If you see a painting of a fried egg and it makes you happy, that's a perfectly good reason to want it. I think the art world can sometimes make very ordinary decisions feel unnecessarily complicated. Of course, there are wonderful technical, historical and cultural conversations to be had about art. I love that side of it too. But there's also a place for simply enjoying something. And I think we should make more room for that.

Not every painting needs to change the world. Sometimes it can just make an ordinary Tuesday morning slightly less miserable. That's especially true of kitchens because they're spaces we use constantly. They're not reserved for special occasions. They're where you make tea when you can't sleep, eat toast standing up, help children with homework and have conversations about whether anyone has remembered to buy milk. The artwork in those spaces becomes part of your everyday life.

I'd much rather have something on my wall that occasionally makes me laugh than something I bought solely because it matched the curtains. Although if it makes me laugh and matches the curtains, even better.

10. My Own Approach to Funny Kitchen Art at Kauter Studios

When I started Kauter Studios, I knew I didn't want to limit myself to one particular subject or mood. Some of my work is humorous, some is more thoughtful, and some explores things that are considerably less comfortable to talk about. The kitchen collection sits firmly at the playful end of things. I love painting everyday objects and turning them into artwork with a little personality. A jar of gherkins might become "In a Bit of a Pickle". A chilli might end up saying "Hot as Fuck". A lemon might be sweet, sarcastic or completely foul-mouthed.

Other pieces are just straightforward food illustrations because I happen to think they're lovely. I don't see any contradiction in that. My aim isn't to produce kitchen decorations that all look identical or follow whatever happens to be fashionable. It's to make colourful, affordable art that people actually want to live with.

The original paintings are part of that, but I also wanted to make the artwork available as prints so that buying something directly from an independent artist doesn't have to mean spending hundreds of pounds. That's something I care about.

I love the idea of someone finding a picture of a chilli on my website, laughing at it, ordering a print and putting it somewhere in their home. Not because it's a hugely important artistic statement, but because it's made their space feel a little more like them. And perhaps because they've got a particularly inappropriate sense of humour. Which, frankly, I fully support.

So, What Should You Put on Your Kitchen Wall?

Whatever you bloody well like.

You can have beautifully painted fruit, cheerful food puns, sarcastic vegetables, rude kitchen prints or an eclectic mixture of all of them.

You can go colourful, minimal, silly or sophisticated. You can choose one bold print or slowly build a gallery wall of things you've collected. The important thing is that you enjoy looking at it.

If you fancy something different from the usual kitchen signs and generic supermarket artwork, have a look through my Kauter Studios kitchen art collections. You'll find colourful food illustrations, funny kitchen prints and a few pieces that probably aren't suitable for particularly easily offended relatives.

And if you end up hanging a painting of a sweary lemon above your toaster, I'd genuinely love to know.

Because I think we could all do with taking our kitchen walls a little less seriously.