Guest Blogger: A Beginner’s Guide to Designing your Kitchen

Entry #2545, June 20, 2013

You don’t need expert design skills or a large budget to build a stylish kitchen. Using some simple principles of modern design, basic budgeting strategies, and an outlook that values timeless style over modern fads, you can put together an excellent home kitchen, even as a complete beginner.

Read on to learn four kitchen styling principles that will give you – a total beginner in kitchen design, styling, and functionality – the outlook and skills required to put together an amazing kitchen.

Stick one style throughout your kitchen

Image via: Johnson + McLeod Design Consultants

1. Stick with one style: classic, modern, or ultra-modern

Blending different styles works sometimes, but not often. If you’re building a kitchen from scratch, it’s important to have a consistent design vision in your head. Choose a style – classic, modern, or ultra-modern – and stick with it for your entire kitchen.

While expert designers can often blend different elements and styles into a fantastic kitchen, mixing classic design features with modern design features fails more often than it succeeds.

2. Set a design budget that gives you room to breathe

Running over your design budget it an expensive, stressful nightmare. Thanks to the wide range of inexpensive pre-built kitchen cabinets that are now available, it’s also a situation that you probably won’t have to deal with when styling your kitchen.

Set a strict budget for your kitchen, but give it some breathing room. A good idea is to estimate how much you’ll need to spend to get the kitchen of your dreams before adding ten to twenty percent extra to your budget for any unexpected expenses.

Focus on maximizing your usable countertop space

Image via: McClellan Architects

3. Put your storage spaces in out-of-the-way areas

Storage space should be a feature of your kitchen, not the focus. Look for out-of-the-way storage opportunities as you’re designing your kitchen, and try to squeeze your shelving and cupboards in wherever possible.

Many people build single-purpose kitchen islands that only serve as a countertop for storing ingredients and housing appliances. Look for storage space opportunities on the underside of counters, inside kitchen islands, and wherever else you can see it.

4. Focus on maximizing your usable countertop space

The hallmark of a great kitchen is usable space. When you’re designing your kitchen, try to focus on usable countertop space – the empty space on your countertop that’s immediately next to the sink, the oven, and the stove.

An important part of effective kitchen design is ensuring that your countertop can be used as a whole. Make sure that the ‘three points’ of your kitchen – the sink, the stove, and the fridge – have a large countertop working space between them.

This kitchen styling guide was written by BritanniaLiving.co.uk. Visit their website to learn more about styling your kitchen with high quality range cookers, built-in ovens, and built-in stoves.

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