The kitchen is the most important room in the house for a lot of people. It’s where you prepare meals and sit down to eat with your family and it’s also used as an entertaining space for friends and family, so it tends to be the heart of the household for most people.
That’s certainly the case for us and if the kitchen is the focal point of your home, it’s vital that your design is on point! If you don’t feel at home in your kitchen, even after decorating and renovating it, it might be the case that you’re making some simple mistakes with your design.
We designed our own kitchen as part of our self-build project and learned a lot through the process. So, if you’re planning on renovating your kitchen, making some slight improvements or just totally going for a new kitchen in a new home, here are 3 things to be sure you avoid.
The Layout Isn’t Practical
The layout of the kitchen is so important and, while you want to make it look good, you always have to put practicality first. Unless you have a very unusually shaped room, you should always follow the golden triangle rule when designing the layout of the kitchen.
The 3 points on the golden triangle are the stove, the refrigerator, and the sink. It’s important that they’re properly placed and the distance between them is right so the kitchen is easy to use. If you have the refrigerator on the other side of the kitchen from the stove with an island in the middle, for example, cooking is going to be difficult.
Equally, if all three points are located too close together, people will be getting in each other’s way when you’ve got more than one person trying to cook in there.
It’s all about finding that perfect balance and that can be difficult, especially if you’re designing the layout yourself. It may be better to get a kitchen design company to handle the planning of the layout for you because they will have more expertise. If you do that, you’ll make better use of the space and the layout will be more practical.
You Don’t Have Enough Storage
A messy kitchen is very impractical and it doesn’t look great, so it’s important that you have enough space to put everything away properly, especially when you’re designing a small kitchen.
When you come to renovate the kitchen, always make your design decisions with storage in mind. Using custom cabinets rather than standardized sizes is a good way to increase storage as well because they’ll fit the kitchen exactly and you won’t have any wasted space.
Your island also presents an area for great storage solutions so be sure to take this into consideration should you be considering an island in your kitchen.
Bad Ventilation
When you’re cooking, it’s important that you have good ventilation in the kitchen for two reasons. Firstly, the steam that is created during cooking can cause damp if the kitchen isn’t well ventilated, and secondly, cooking can create pollutants that aren’t good for the air quality in your home if they are sitting around for a long time.
A good extractor fan is important but you should also make sure that there is good air flow through the room.
Got Something to Add?
These are just some of the things to be mindful off when it comes to designing your kitchen. Be sure to leave a comment below if you have something to add.
Until next time, thanks for reading.
Helen, Nial and Lewis.
Welcome to Pikalily, an award-winning food, travel and lifestyle blog. We are Nial and Helen, a happily married couple from Northern Ireland, who share a passion for food and travel among many things. We became parents to our beautiful boy Lewis in 2017. Follow our adventures through the blog.
