Today’s kitchens are now often seen to be the heart of the home, with many combining dining and living spaces to make the kitchen a more central space that is functional and practical. Therefore, designing the right kitchen for your home requires careful planning and attention to detail. Once you know how you want your kitchen to look, décor wise, you can focus on the key elements that add up to make your kitchen the functional hub that you want it to be.

 

Plan Ahead

There’s nothing better than thinking and planning ahead when it comes to designing a room with both style and functionality in mind. It’s always beneficial to consider the functionality of your kitchen before you begin to purchase your appliances and design your layout. Your kitchen’s layout needs to work well for your daily routine, as well as for any entertaining you may do. Therefore designing a space that has space for every appliance needed is essential and also give consideration to where the dishwasher is placed in relation to daily dishes, glasses and utensils. Once you’ve decided on a layout that will work well for you, you can begin to look at which appliances will work well too.

Include Plenty of Storage

With so much going on in the kitchen, it’s so important to design the layout with plenty of storage included. The biggest mistake many people make when designing their kitchen is lack of storage…and we all love gadgets, small appliances and food items, right! There are so many different ways that you can add storage to your kitchen, through kitchen units, cupboards and even on the back of cupboard doors and so on. Having dedicated storage space for specific items will keep the kitchen neat and tidy, ensuring you always have plenty of space for all of your kitchen utensils and other items. Investing in some deeper drawers is perfect for storing items such as pots and pans, whereas a railing above the cooker would be ideal for storing all of your main kitchen utensils and so on.

There are so many different ways that you can add storage to your kitchen, through kitchen units, cupboards and even on the back of cupboard doors. Having dedicated storage space for specific items will keep the kitchen neat and tidy, and your counters free of clutter, ensuring you always have plenty of space for all of your kitchen utensils and other items too. Investing in some deeper drawers is perfect for storing items such as pots and pans, whereas a railing above the cooker may be ideal for storing all of your main kitchen utensils and so on.

 

 

The Brighter the Better

To capture the right atmosphere and mood in any room, you need to focus on the lighting you have in place. For warmer, cozy living spaces you often find that yellow-toned, soft lighting works really well at creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere. For the kitchen, however, you want to be able to vary the atmosphere to suit the situation.

Today, kitchens aren’t just used to cook meals, they’re social hubs used for dining, socializing and even working, so adding the right lighting is key. With so many different functions, it’s great to be able to alter the lighting to suit the mood. Dimmers are ideal for kitchens, as you can control the brightness of the lighting and change the overall feel from bright and fresh, to dim and cozy. You can also look at adding some additional lamps into the kitchen, to use when you want to achieve a softer, relaxing feel. Recessed lighting behind crown molding and other trim work is also a nice option to set the mood.

 

Essential Surface Space

You can never have too much surface space in the kitchen. Even if you don’t use all of your surface space for preparing food, you’d be surprised just how useful lots of surface space really is. Invest in a good quality, durable material will be very beneficial as you want to have a material that will last you for many years to come, no matter what you put it through. Granite is always popular, but options like quartz are also very durable and beautiful.

Out with the Old

If you’re re-designing your kitchen, you may want to look at investing in some new features for your kitchen to give it a new, fresh look. Whilst changing every single thing in the kitchen would become expensive, you can still make bold changes and completely change the feel of the room with smaller changes that are most cost efficient. Start with your kitchen units, investing in some replacement kitchen doors would enable you to create a whole new look without the cost of replacing your whole kitchen at once. You could then look at changing features such a slighting, old appliances and even hardware such as door handles and knobs, as these small changes will still have a strong impact on the overall feel and look of the kitchen.