Whether your kitchen is small or spacious, an innovative kitchen design is essential to make it stand out. Getting all the things planned beforehand and designing a perfect kitchen layout is the key to ensuring that you get a functional and organized kitchen space. A thought-out kitchen design is all you need to make the most out of your cooking area. When designing a kitchen from scratch, there are many elements to the layout other than just selecting furniture, lighting, or cabinetries. You need to be precise about heights. You need to make sure that there is enough space to facilitate comfortable movement around the kitchen. Moreover, the placement of electrical appliances also plays a vital role in designing an ideal kitchen.
While the home improvement service you will hire for the job can do most of the planning about kitchen design, you need to know how you can assist them in optimizing your dream kitchen.
To make the task of building an ideal kitchen more manageable for you, here are five tips that can help you in this regard.
If you want to hire a confided-in renovation service to design a perfect kitchen for you, contact My Soho Design. You can also sign-up for a virtual showroom tour on our website.
1. Decide What Function Your Space Is Going to Serve
Probably the most essential thing to consider when planning a new kitchen design is to identify its function. You must be thinking that this is a silly question; obviously, people use their kitchen for cooking. And you are not wrong. Cooking is the primary function of every kitchen. However, over the years, the kitchen has transformed into much more than that—it is more like the heart of your home. It is a place where people gather and spend most of their time. So, being the most important room in the house, you can design your kitchen to be much more than that just a cooking area. But first, ask yourself how you want your cooking space to function otherwise? For instance, if you do other daily activities such as watching TV or talking to your kids in the kitchen, you may consider adding a dedicated space in your kitchen with chairs where you can chat with your kids while they do their homework. You can also go for an open kitchen design directly in front of the TV lounge so that you can enjoy your favorite Tv shows while cooking.
2. Consider Work Triangle
When planning your kitchen design, keep the flow of the workspace in mind. People in the design world like to call this flow “the work triangle.” The work triangle is the distance between your sink, refrigerator, and stove. If you plan the layout correctly, this work triangle will allow you to quickly move between these three most used stations of your kitchen. And suppose you fail to set up the work triangle proficiently. In that case, it will result in uncomfortable movement around your kitchen space. Imagine if you have to run all across the room to empty the pot of steaming noodles into the sink; it is inconvenient and indicates a flaw in your work triangle. Although there is no hard and fast rule for the distance between these points, you should keep at least 40-60 inches of space between each edge of the triangle.
3. Plan Adequate Storage Areas
One of the major problems homeowners face is inadequate storage in their kitchens design. It is often misunderstood that small kitchens cannot have proper storage, but it is not valid. Storage space can be facilitated into cramped kitchens with the help of smart storage solutions. Add pull-out pantries in your kitchen design that provides easy access and organized storage for all kitchen supplies.
Other storage solutions that you can use in your kitchen could be pan and pot drawers, open shelves, or walk-in pantries. Think about how you can arrange your kitchen items in storage cabinets to have easy access. For instance, if you love to cook with herbs and spices a lot and use them often, then place them in a pull-out drawer near your stove or cooktop.
4. Let There Be Lots of Light!
Proper lighting in your kitchen is just as important as other aspects of kitchen design. To help you choose the best lighting and fixtures for your kitchen, here are three types of lightings most renovation services recommend. Therefore, you should also give them a go.
- General Lighting: these types of lights usually cover the entire space. Designers usually recommend general lighting because the dispersion is even throughput the kitchen space. You can also install dimmer switches with the lights to dim your kitchen’s ambiance during dinners or parties.
- Task Lighting: these lights are used when you are performing specific tasks. Under-cabinet or shelf lights are an example of task lighting fixtures.
- Accent lighting: these lights typically don’t assist you in performing any task. Still, they have more to do with highlighting your kitchen’s ambiance. Up lightings are one of the prominent examples of accent lights.
5. Choose the Appliances Beforehand
Until you figure out what kind of kitchen appliances you will need, you won’t be able to layout a perfect kitchen design. Decide the machines and kitchen equipment you will need before getting your renovation project started. Make a list of appliances you will buy and make sure that they fit in your kitchen design when making the purchase. Ask yourself what kind of cooking range you prefer and whether it should be gas or electric? When choosing a cooking range, look for stand-alone options if your kitchen is small. Suppose you feel that you are unable to decide on the perfect appliances for your kitchen. In that case, you can take help from kitchen experts and home renovation services.
My Soho Design can help you build the kitchen of your dream with an ideal design and layout. All you have to do is contact us at their office or book a virtual showroom tour.