Editorial 2: What type of kitchen suits you?
This second of five editorial articles takes the requirements you developed in editorial 1 and helps you turn them into a practical design and layout for your own bespoke kitchen.
If you've worked through the ideas and prompts in the previous editorial you'll be ready with lots of functional requirements for your kitchen. In other words, you know what you want your kitchen to do. Now it's time to think about aesthetics (how you want it to look) and to create that bespoke kitchen layout that really satisfies your needs.
Deciding on a 'look'
First, consider what type of people will use the kitchen. Are they reserved or outgoing, artists or engineers, accountants or footballers?
Take into account the rest of the house, what's that like? You might like to choose a kitchen that matches the style of the rest of the house. A country-house kitchen might not seem right in a city centre apartment.
Ace designer Anne McKevitt (you may have seen her on television) recommends thinking of your kitchen design from five perspectives: light, space, colour, texture and detail. I deal with use of space at the end of this article, but for now, let's briefly look at the other four perspectives.
How much natural light do you get, and from which direction? Light from the south contains warmer tones than that from the north. Many people dislike the quality of light given off by strip lights, others dislike just as much the shadows created by spot lights. Each bulb technology gives off a different colour of light.
Try a mood board to help you collect your ideas about colours, textures and shapes, it's better to decide there what works and what doesn't than to change your mind in the middle of installation. Just get a big piece of card and stick to it anything you see that you might like in your kitchen, for instance pictures from magazines, snippets of textiles, shape drawings, ideas from catalogues. Buy test pots and paint patches on the walls and see how the colour works at different times of day, it's amazing how much a colour can change.
How do textures affect you? Would you be excited by contrasting textures .. brick and glass, cork and tiles, or soothed by warm and traditional wood, wicker and carpet? How about a granite worktop, terracotta flooring and zinc, copper or chrome features? Or mosaic artwork and bright and funky linoleum floor patterns? If you can, gather examples of the real materials you'd like for your mood board.
What kind of theme are you setting? Modern with clean lines and shiny surfaces or traditional? Minimalist or stimulating? Foodie or fast foodie?
Do your things (appliances, crockery) look great on display, or should they be hidden away?
Consider shapes. Is your kitchen long and thin, or square. How can you develop the existing shapes into a theme, or complement them? Is there a room feature with an inspiring shape that you could echo in your design?
Also consider how long you are going to be in the house. If you're trying to sell your house, go for white or light, clean-looking neutral tones. Light yellow, cream, blues, lilac, and mint greens all work well. Get rid of strong patterns or colours, and let as much light in as possible, and go for bright, modern, practical and above all, clean.
Having considered all that, you'll know what you want your kitchen for, and what visual impression you'd like to make. Now we have to bring it all together in a kitchen layout.
Designing your bespoke kitchen layout
Start with sketches and discussions. Don't measure at this stage unless you really need to know something will fit. Just think. Start with two very important steps. Firstly take your work from the previous editorial where you developed the idea of zoning and start to play with ideas of where your zones should go. Then work out where your cooking area, washing up station, and fridge will go. Ideally they should be about two paces apart to form a magic triangle, with a very clear path between the sink and the oven. Traditionally people often want their sink under the window, but that's a throwback to when we used to stand there to do the washing up. Nowadays most kitchens have a dishwasher which opens up the option of putting the sink to one side and making a food preparation worksurface at the window. It's generally good to have workspace either side of the cooker.
Make sketches of layouts and discuss them. Consider where your plumbing, doors, radiators and windows are, but don't be confined by them as they can usually be moved. Many people add more kitchen space by including it as part of a house extension.
Once you've sorted out where the major kitchen appliances and workstations will be it's time to get out the tape measure and graph paper and try to fit everything else in. Decide on a scale, eg. 10cm of reality = 1mm on the plan (so measure reality in mm and divide by 100 for your plan), then cut pieces of paper to represent the size and shape of your prospective appliances and stick them on your plan with a removable adhesive. If you wish, download and print our planning grid (it's in PDF format, try the link, and if it doesn't work you probably need to download and install Adobe Reader to view it). Some ideas include:
- make sure doors don't open onto frequently used areas such as the oven
- store crockery near the dishwasher
- put tall appliances at the end of a run of worktop
- kitchens should have a minimum of four drawers
- if you want a television, can that be wall-mounted?
- leave space to move about
Decide whether you want a drawer between the work surfaces and the cupboards (with dummy drawers under the sink). A side effect of this is the cupboards underneath are less tall, forcing you to bend down more. Or would you prefer all your drawers in a single vertical column, giving easier access to the remaining taller cupboards and cleaner lines. Some cupboards could be replaced by large capacity drawers, possibly with peg boards so you can lay out your crockery.
Work out where you are going to store your utensils. The most commonly used should be close to hand. Ideally, cutlery goes in a drawer with proper dividers. Commonly used utensils and knives can be hung near to where they will be used, wooden spoons maybe go in a jar. Have a clearout and throw (or car-boot) everything you don't use. Or take everything out of the kitchen and after a month, only keep the stuff you've brought back in.
If your kitchen must share space with other very different functions, for instance if you live in a bedsit, maybe try putting the kitchen along one wall and use shutters or concertina doors to close it off when not in use.
Fitted kitchens are a fairly new invention, some prefer free-standing furniture they can take with them when they leave. Moveable units on casters might serve dual functions and allow you a fluid layout.
Now review your bespoke kitchen design. Have you covered everything? In your imagination, look up. What's on the walls, the ceiling? Look down, what's on the floor? If you are changing the layout of the kitchen, the chances are the floor will have to be replaced.
One of the biggest problems people have with their kitchens is storage space. If you're a cook, you'll need lots of space for ingredients and equipment, maybe even space on the window-ledge for growing herbs. If you're environmentally aware you'll need extra space for recycling, a compartmentalised bin and maybe even a wormery to convert vegetable waste into compost for the garden.
Increasingly people are becoming aware of noise as a pollutant. Some household gadgets can sound like a chainsaw. If that bothers you, measures such as installing carpet and soft furnishings dampen sound, and you may wish to check your appliances and replace those that jar. Besides the obvious, check the doorbell and phone too.
Finally, re-consider your budget. Kitchens can cost anything from a few hundred pounds (eg. for new handles and a lick of paint) to £60,000 and more for a custom-designed and built, large bespoke kitchen. Remember, your kitchen is an investment that you'll very probably recoup and profit from if you sell your house.
With all this work done, you're ready for some serious shopping. Take a look at the next editorial that explains how to choose your cabinets.
