How to design a small kitchen
One of our favourite parts of
the house to decorate is the kitchen, which we love to do. It is a place where
everyone tends to gather in the house. There's a lot of work to be done in the
kitchen. We all want to have a new, custom-made kitchen with a big island and
more cabinetry than we know what to do with, right? Many of us have small
kitchens. Sometimes, it can be hard to figure out how to make such small spaces
work for us and look good at the same time. We've made a lot of kitchens, and
we've seen them in all shapes and sizes. Promise! You don't have to give up
style for function, I promise!
Begin by making a
space plan that works well for your home or office.
Having a good floor plan is
even more important if you have a small space. In this case, even though the
kitchen is beautiful, it won't work. Make sure your sink, refrigerator, and
stovetop are all easy to get to and have enough counter space for each one. Pay
attention to the cabinetry layout to ensure there is enough space for the
things you use every day.
Whether you do this literally
or just in your head, you should walk through the space to figure out what
works best for you. A small kitchen that you love will have a lot to do with
everything from the floor plan to the cabinetry.
Keep to the same
colour scheme.
Make sure to choose the
colours you want to work with from the start and stick to them. When there are
too many colours in a small space, they will make the room feel too crowded. We
made Anne Sage's kitchen look like it had a lot of wood with white and grey
elements. Then we added in the black appliances, brass hardware, and the
carpet. It makes the space look bigger and more inviting if you keep the same
colour scheme. No matter what colours you choose, it's best to keep everything
the same in a small kitchen.
Make a mess of the
cabinetry.
Stores matter when you have a
small space. Some people don't like having too much cabinetry, so we like to
add a few things that make the room feel more open. There are many ways to make
this happen, but the most common is putting in a range hood over a microwave
vent with extra cabinetry and open shelves. If you don't like having open
shelves, you could have glass doors on some of your cabinets. These simple
changes will make your kitchen feel more open. There isn't a window in our
Hillside Remodel, so we put open shelves above the sink. Looking at pretty
shelves instead of a cabinet is what our client can do while she cleans up.
carefully choose the
lighting
If your kitchen is small,
it's even more important to ensure your lighting is doing its job well. Even if
you use a lot of tricks to make it look bigger, bad lighting will always make a
space look small. There might not be a place to hang pendant lights over an
island in your kitchen, so we like to hang one above the kitchen sink to add
another level of lighting and make sure you aren't doing your dishes in the
dark! We also like to put sconces above open shelves or a window. Flush-mounted
lights will make the room look brighter, so you should put them on the ceiling.
Lighting will play a big part in making your small kitchen look bigger.