Our Tips for Designing a Kitchen to Love
The kitchen is the centre point of the home and, in our opinion, the most important room in the house to nail. We are sharing our top 10 tips for designing a kitchen you will love, for many years to come.
Budgeting
The number one starting point to designing a kitchen - how much do you have to spend on this room? Be very mindful of your budget when making selections and get quotes whenever possible. Try to factor in an allowance for unforeseen circumstances - this will mean you are able to finish the kitchen to the level you want without making compromises or blowing the bank.
The budget needs to cover appliances, cabinets, hardware, tapware, benchtops and splash back, just to name a few. You will usually also require additional trades to your builders such as chippie, plumber, tiler, electrician and painter. It takes a large group of professionals to bring this room together. After all, it is the most detailed, thought out and important room in any home. Take your time in the initial planning phase.
Theme & Research
The look and feel of this space sets a tone for the entire home, both internally and externally. You want the home to feel cohesive, not confusing. The kitchen always sets the mood for your bathrooms and laundry, and while you don’t need to have the same cabinetry, it just must be complimentary.
When using Pinterest as a way of collating your favourite looks, here is our tips for getting the best result without overwhelming yourself. It’s great to have boards that are broad to begin with, but when it gets down to a chosen theme/style, you need to be more specific with the finishes. Make a new board just based on the kitchen you are actually designing, funnel your ideas down to more specific boards. For example, you will need:
Cabinetry: you need to decide on timber/no timber, two-pack painted finish in white or in a lovely soft colour
Hardware: integrated handles or hardware
Appliances: integrated appliances or not (more on this below)
Benches: how thick you like the benches to be
Shelving: do you want some open shelving for styling
Furniture: bench stools at the centre bench and how would this look.
Collect your inspiration pictures, take your time, and right notes on each photo reminding you of what exactly it is that you like in the picture so when its time to share, your tradies can see your desired outcome.
Grab all your samples and put them together. Whenever possible take your samples to the space that will become your kitchen - seeing them all together in the true light is essential!
Appliances
Choose the type of cooking appliances you want first. A visit to Winnings Appliances or similar is a great start. You will need to decide on things such as wall oven or freestanding oven, gas cook top or inducted, microwave or no microwave, single sink or double sink, type of fridge/freezer set up you like best i.e. integrated or not integrated.
These need to be chosen initially because the kitchen is designed around them and their measurements.
Accessories
Consider - is this a kitchen designed for an at-home chef, a simple style of home cook, a house you are flipping or a forever home? This would mean a differing selection of kitchen cooking accessories and inclusions that would suit the end use better. If it’s a house to flip, you keep it fairly simple. If it’s your forever home, you could go all out. Inclusion options include. ie pull out cooking oil draw, hidden spice rack storage, pull out bin and recycling area, butlers pantry, integrated breakfast zone, filtered water tap such as Zip (requires more cabinet space under the sink), filtered water and ice making components to your fridge.
Lighting
There are multiple types of light to factor in - natural light, task lighting, mood lighting and sensor lighting (consider for a butlers or pantry light).
Do you like the look of wall lights, pendants lights, LED strip lighting, or all of the above? When choosing the more ornamental type of lighting such as pendant or wall lights, consider how much you like them when both on and off. You may like a light fitting by day, yet when it is lit, the effect it has is underwhelming, so make sure you can see how they look by day and by night.
Consider the type of light - blue, day or warm lighting . We always use warm lighting. We are always conscious to not over-light a room and this applies to the LED strip and down lights, do not overlook this.
A hot tip from us - make sure your LED strip light runs all the way behind the extractor. Often electricians may note that the extractor has its own light and will run them either side. This creates a disconnect in the lighting when the LED is both for function and mood. Think about the result when the extractor light is off.
Layout
It’s always good to play with at least 3 layouts first. Think about how you like to use a kitchen, what makes sense functionality-wise. Consider these options matched with your choice of cooking appliances. Some appliances will cancel out certain layouts. Sinks on the centre bench or on the back run always decides on the length of the runs you are dealing with which equals useable prep space.
When dealing with small spaces we usually always have to pull the sink onto the centre bench, where as bigger kitchens you do not. And if you can afford the room of having a butlers pantry, it can be beneficial to have a sink in there as well, which clears counter space in the main kitchen for all coffee and tea making requirements meaning less clutter which we love.
Bench & Kicker Height
In recent times we have seen a trend of the bench height increasing up to 950mm. I would suggest this when you have tall clients, but for average rule of thumb we use 920mm, as this suits short and tall people. You will find project homes are still working around the 900mm mark.
When you allow yourself a little more height you also gain draw depth, or bench thickness, so if you are having a 100mm thick bench top I would be inclined to consider a 950H if it suits the clients.
You can also shrink the height of the kicker. The average is 100-150mm which allows for unlevelled floors. But when building new homes that tend to be more level you can actually gain back some draw depth again by going down to a 50mm kicker. If you like to make cabinetry appear to look like it’s floating you can request that the kickers be set back as far as possible 150mm.
Put a measuring tape in your car and when you’re at your friends house see what they have and what it feels like.
Benchtop Material
When it comes to to stone tops, do you prefer the durability of a manmade look-a-like stone, or are you more of a natural kinda person and can except that it will require more maintenance. If you want a product that is bomb proof then you would be inclined to consider porcelain, other options are concrete, timber and micro cement (which we would avoid if possible). We have also seen a resurgence for a tiled bench top, which we would avoid due to the grout getting grubby with time.
Mixing Metals
You may think that you should not mix your metals colours i.e. if you have a black tap, you must also have black handles, yet we totally disagree and like to mix my metals, creating layers. You will find that certain metals act as families - spend some time on Pinterest and see this in action. We believe two metals are better than one.
Trades & Professionals - Your Team
The most important part of the process is choosing your dream team. Recommendations are essential, and when a person comes highly recommended you will usually have to wait a little longer. Tradies also work mostly as extended teams so ask them who they would suggest, as they would never suggest someone that would make them look bad. When it comes to pricing, we would suggest as a general rule of thumb that you do not go for the cheapest, as you know that will usually result in poor quality. Quality comes at a price and considering how long a kitchen usually stands in a home it’s important not to cut corners.
If you are interested in our design services and have a potential project that you need help with, please get in touch.
