Ideally a kitchen should be designed around your life! It should facilitate you and make cooking and spending time with your family easier.
You need to think about how your new kitchen design should compliment your lifestyle and your daily routine. Jot down what all requirements you have in a kitchen and then prioritize those.
Look at your priority list and then spend equal amount of time and money on achieving those requirements you have in order to justify your priorities.
To help you design your new kitchen, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration in accordance with your priorities.
Decide your kitchen unit: is it a main, or a small kitchenette; first floor, ground floor or a servant kitchen You first need to see if your new home is going to house a single main kitchen or more.
The layouts of modern houses these days are usually such that allow more than one kitchen. In a typical Pakistani modern house built on 1 or 2 kanal; there would be a :
• Main
• a servant /service kitchen -semi joined to the main
• Basement kitchenette
• First floor kitchen
For now, lets focus on the main kitchen.
Design it Spacious enough
Now for a single kitchen home, the design must be spacious and should allow you to house maximum cabinetry for storage as well as should be a clutter free design. Your daily routine cooking utensils and appliances should be handy yet have its own space identified. For example, having an appliance deck. Its basically a cabinet with electrical sockets installed and maybe a pull out concealed counter for keeping your handy cooking appliances such as the food processors, egg beaters etc.
To give your kitchen an open and spacious feel, integrated appliances are an excellent feature. They make the area look beautiful as well as organized and clutter free.
Select style- while not compromising with durability
One of the basic things to priorities when designing your kitchen should be the durability factor. At the back end of our minds,we all want a durable lasting one. However it is natural to get indulge in making the outlook beautiful by focusing on different finishes that we forget how important the durability is.
Not only the materials help in making the kitchen durable but also the design.
There are two main types of kitchen layout designs:
• Free standing
• Wall mounted
Free standing ones, are built/placed on a plinth like our traditional home kitchens. There is nothing wrong with a free standing kitchen only that in some cases they make you compromise on the durability. Especially in hot/humid regions where the cabinets absorb the moisture get more prone to wear and tear. Due to the lack of ventilation available to cabinets, the materials rot over time giving an open invitation to insects and pests in your kitchen!!
Wall mounted on the other hand, a relatively new and modern trend are those where your wall cabinets are fixed with the wall. These are more durable and gives your kitchen a longer life as they keep your carcass ventilated and insect free.
So Select your kitchen style; where you want a more traditional outlook go for the free standing layout. If you desire to go for a modern, open and a durable one then wall mounted is your solution.
Look for Materials Available
After deciding on the style. Go on to the finishes you require.
In the market, there are many different finishes available such as :
• Laminate
• Lacquered
• Veneer
• Stainless Steel
• Glass
It might be difficult but not impossible to find all of these materials under one roof. Consider yourself lucky to have found a kitchen designer company offering you all these under one roof. For the Main Kitchen, lacquered, stainless steel with a combination of glass might be ideal. Stainless steel and Glass finishes are more classy and towards the high end.
Get into Cabinet details:
Select your Upper Cabinet Style
These could be:
• Frame less
• With frame
Frameless are more modern and chic with modern gadgets to hold the panel. They make your kitchen look beautiful and gives an extraordinary element.
If opting for a frame, it would be an aluminum section holding your cabinet with screws and hinges. This would also look nice.
Apart from the cabinetry and layout, lighting and correct flooring is also an important aspect of your kitchen. The lighting should be bright and allow room for natural light to be a part of your day usage
once you have your priorities set, going to a kitchen specialist company would be a good idea where you can get your own kitchen designed and get a 3D view made of how it would look!
Good luck with your new kitchen!
