When you are in the process of designing your new kitchen there are a lot of things to consider, and of course you don't want to miss out anything. In this brief post I will go through the most important items which should make it onto your 'must have' list.
1. Worktop Space: The single most important part of designing a new kitchen is your work surface area. In an ideal situation you should at least 600mm of space both sides of your hob/range cooker, but the more the better. This reduces the distance to carry heavy and hot items when cooking. The same goes for your oven, whether eye level or built under the worktop.
You should also try and have a large uninterrupted surface where you can spread out the dinner plates to make serving a lot easier. You can free up your work surface area by having well designed storage cabinets throughout your kitchen. This limits the number of items on your countertop which take up valuable space.
The only items that should be on your worktop are your toaster and your kettle. Or if you can find a home for your toaster, and can stretch to buying a new boiling water tap, your worktops will be completely free from clutter! The boiling water tap made it onto this 'must have' list. See No. 4 below.
2. Accessible Storage: 'More drawers than doors!' - That's one of our favorite sayings here at Noel Dempsey Design. The reason for this is that when you open a drawer it pulls everything out of the press so you can see exactly what's inside. With a standard opening door the items at the back aren't very visible, and as a result seldom used.
Drawers are great for storing all kinds of kitchen items, such as tinned food, jars, pasta, food mixers, blenders, plates and dishes, pots and pans. We can custom make your drawers any size to suit the items you would like to store in them.
3. Waste Bins: A 'must have' in every kitchen, pull-out bins. They are available in a number of different sizes, various shapes, and you can have up to four or five separate compartments.
All the bins can be removed for easy cleaning, and they usually have a soft-closing mechanism built in to match your cupboard doors.
4. A Quooker Tap: Or a boiling water tap if you're unfamiliar with the brand Quooker. A boiling water tap replaces your existing kettle and will provide you with instant boiling water 24/7.
They are great for cooking, making tea/coffee, sterilising bottles, cleaning pots and pans, or anything you boil the kettle for at home.
The new Quooker Fusion is now a direct replacement for both your kettle and your standard kitchen tap, by giving you boiling and hot and cold water.
5. Lighting: Often overlooked when re-designing a kitchen space. The correct type of lighting can completely transform your kitchen from being a cold unwelcoming area to a nice homely room.
The most important area to light up is the work surface. You can do this by running fluorescent or LED lights underneath the wall cabinets. For a little extra light, add some on top of the presses too. This creates a lovely warm glow to the kitchen.
The image above has the all the lights turned on and helps brighten the entire room.
The image below has no lighting turned on. Notice how the cabinet and wall colours look a cooler shade of grey.
I hope these few tips help with your new kitchen design. All of the designers here at Noel Dempsey use these and many other design techniques to ensure that your new kitchen is exactly what you dreamed of. Our years of experience and extensive knowledge of the industry has made us one of Ireland's top bespoke kitchen companies, used by architects and designers alike.
By David Dempsey
Call our Wicklow Showroom +353(0)404 64548