The kitchen is one of the areas of your home that needs to change most frequently to keep up with the demands of changing families. If you want to extend your family, for example, and want to have children, you’ll need a larger space to cook healthier meals. You’ll also need more storage space, mainly when the children are young. However, when they move out of the house after growing up, it can seem like the extra space has become a drawback rather than a positive aspect. It means you have to clean more, for starters, and the larger area might seem like too much.
You might get another family member to live with you, such as grandparents, parents or cousins, and you might even get some friends as roommates. Regardless, you’ll notice that your kitchen is the place that must undergo the most massive transformations to keep up with the new surroundings. However, all these changes can take their toll on you, particularly regarding money. Changing your kitchen constantly means that you’ll incur some substantial costs and might exceed your budget many times.
Therefore, creating a kitchen that can stand the test of time and is both practical and aesthetically pleasing is important. While it might sound good in theory, things can be slightly different in practice. Here’s where you can start if you’ve been thinking about breathing new life into your kitchen and creating something that’ll last you for a long while.
Space Considerations
Although the kitchen is traditionally associated with cooking, it has taken on many other roles over the years. The kitchen has also become the space used when dining and a spot for leisure and entertaining guests. As a result, it is more important than ever to think of the layout and consider the measurements when designing your perfect kitchen.
The first and most important is measuring the floor, so you know how everything can fit in perfectly. You want to get all your furniture to fit but leave sufficient room for movement simultaneously. You must also work efficiently with the space you have. Even if your kitchen is small, you can maximise your space by using clever storage solutions such as deep drawers and stacked cupboards.
At Kitchen Warehouse Ltd, you can find several kitchen arrangements that can suit your space. You can choose from several materials and colour patterns, depending on your taste. In general, if you’re working with a small kitchen, you want to select something in lighter shades of white or beige. Lighter tones create the impression of wide, roomy spaces, so they’re the perfect choice if your kitchen is on the smaller side.
Cabinetry Choice
The cabinets are one of the most critical parts of any kitchen. Choosing them correctly means that you’ll never have to worry about storage. However, there are other considerations you should have in mind. One of the most important is the design you choose. You can choose to focus just on the dining or living areas of your home when making this choice, or you can take it a step further and integrate your kitchen cabinetry into the overall plan of your home.
You can get inspiration from other kitchens, as there are plenty of designs on the internet and in interior design magazines that can help you. You can also gather inspiration from your household. Think about how the kitchen suits the rest of your space and how you can create a perfectly integrated design with the rest of your rooms.
You must also consider scale, symmetry and style. Consider how the bulk of the cabinets will impact the rest of the design. You should balance the features among themselves and mix their proportions. For instance, you can make a chimney breast or the cooker of the central pieces and work around them. When it comes to styling, you have two options, classical or modern. In the case of the former, you choose a design that is timeless, such as the Shaker kitchen. The main advantage here is that the classical styles never look dated, and a fresh coat of paint is usually enough to breathe new life into them. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t make more modern styles work. However, given the investment, it can help to consider whether you also see yourself like the design in the future.
The Right Materials
When choosing the materials you want to have in your kitchen, consider how bothered you are by signs of wear. Your kitchen sees a lot of wear and tear. Cooking, cleaning, and even placing mugs on the countertop leaves tiny marks that show up as damage over time. This mechanical damage, coming in the form of scratches, chipping and even loss of lustre, is inevitable and will occur regardless of the materials you choose. However, some are more resistant than others.
Marble is relatively fragile and tends to get etching marks quite quickly. If that doesn’t bother you, you can use it in your kitchen and create an elegant design. However, if even minor damage is likely to bother you, you’ll want to steer clear of that and choose granite (or even the sturdier, engineered granite), quartz or concrete.
Bring It Together
A kitchen that does its job well is one that looks nice and provides a cosy living environment as well. However, that doesn’t mean that everything in your kitchen should match perfectly. While that look can make your kitchen look like it came straight from the pages of a magazine, it can also look a bit too polished and sterile, which isn’t something you want if you’re planning to make practical use of your kitchen. So, if you like a particular trend, think of the ways in which you can morph it to fit the rest of your home, not vice versa.
To sum up, designing a kitchen takes up quite a bit of creativity and careful consideration. With so many style options available out there, it can be challenging to find the one for you. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers, just things you like and things you don’t.