How to Design Your Dream Kitchen?

The kitchen is the heart of your home. It’s everything from the place you store your family’s food to where you cook, eat, and entertain guests. Finally, creating that big or small dream kitchen can be the last step to truly making your house feel like your real home.

Designing a new kitchen is a very individual process. While of course, you’ll have limitations from the size of your house and budget, it’s also important to think about accommodating your needs for your kitchen and choice of kitchen design styles. Some important questions to think about:

• Which of my current appliances am I keeping? Which new appliances will I need to fit in?
• What do I use my kitchen for? Will we eat more meals there or in the dining room? Will I be entertaining guests?
• Do I do extensive or specialized meal prep? How many work surfaces do I require?
• What layout do I want? Do I want a kitchen island? What shape?
• Finally, how am I going to coordinate my interior design (choice of lighting, flooring, new kitchen cabinets, etc.)

While they are a great opportunity to show off your design skills, you can see why kitchen remodel can often be overwhelming! A full renovation or remodelling requires selecting a layout, appliances, lighting and more. In this post, we’ll help you start the process of making your dreams a reality.

Best Layouts For Your Dream Kitchen

When beginning your design, you’ll need to start with your dream kitchen layout. This will is a fundamental part of your design that allows you to move on to other steps with success.

A good way to start planning your layout is by considering the different building blocks that will ultimately make up your kitchen. Like actors on a stage, they will need to play harmoniously together to produce the right effect.

The following is a good start for basic kitchen elements that almost everyone will have:

• Fridge
• Stove
• Sink
• Cabinets
• Countertop

Once you have an idea where these are going to go, you’ll need to identify your other dream kitchen must-haves and give them a place. While the choices are endless, here are some popular options:

• Kitchen island
• Dishwasher
• Backsplash
• Range hood
• Prep area
• Wine fridge
• Dining area/breakfast bar

The list goes on!

While placing your kitchen building blocks, don’t neglect to consider the fundamental pieces of any room, such as wiring, windows, flooring, ceiling and lighting.

Once you understand these pieces, you can visualize your layout. You can either do this roughly on your own or with a number of online 3D rendering tools. This is also a great time to bring in a professional kitchen designer, who can help you imagine and plan your layout.

Dream Design Tips

As your new kitchen starts to take shape, here are some other important tips to keep you on the right track:

Work Triangle

A common concept that can help you check your design is the work triangle. In most kitchens, there are three areas that see the most use:

• The sink
• The fridge
• The stove

If you reflect, you’ll probably see that many nights in the kitchen involve moving between these three features. A good rule of thumb is to ensure that no two of them are more than five feet apart. There’s a lot of flexibility here; your main kitchen sink could be further away, for example, if you had a second, closer sink on your island.

Storage

While storage isn’t glamorous, it can make the difference between a cluttered kitchen you’d rather avoid and a room you love. A good way to plan for storage solutions is to consider everything you’ll need to store, working backwards from biggest to smallest. As an example, here are some objects you might need to plan storage for:

• Spaghetti pot
• Stand mixer
• Baking sheet
• Knives

Once you know what you’ll need to store, you can mix and match from the variety of kitchen storage types available:

• Floor cabinets
• Wall cabinets
• Pantries
• Kitchen island cabinets

Lighting

Lastly, make sure you consider the role of lighting in your new kitchen. Lighting will determine the mood of the room, and you need to make sure you’ll have sufficient lighting available for all the tasks you’ll need to complete in your kitchen.

The best approach is to plan a combination of general lighting (like a light fixture), coupled with a mix of recessed lighting(dimmer switches are a great choice) and specialized lighting, such as for your custom cabinets or range hood.

Hiring A Renovation Team

Once you have a solid layout put together, you should be able to put together a rough cost estimate and budget for your reno. This can sometimes be a tricky process, and you might need to add and subtract elements to balance your kitchen desires and financial resources.

Once you’re set on a budget and plan, it’s time to bring in some help if you haven’t already during the overall design stage. Before listing some helpful professionals you may want to consult, here are some tips for dealing with anyone on your renovation team:

• Check credentials: Architects, general contractors, carpenters, and plumbers all have their own credential requirements in your area. As you interview candidates, it’s a good idea to make sure they are up to date with all of the necessary credentials. They should be happy to show this!
• Check References: Any professional should be happy to share references with you for jobs well done. This can also help you find a contractor with the right experience – ask for a contractor with experience working on similar properties.
• Check Your Connection: You’ll be embarking together on a long, expensive project. Take some time to chat and trust your gut on whether or not you’ll work well together.
• Check Yourself!: Even if your contractor comes with perfect references, do your own research. Ask around your neighbourhood, run a Google search, and check local groups and forums.

Here are some professionals you may want on your team. For most renovators, it’s a good idea to work with as few people as possible and to let them manage the rest. Trying to be your own general contractor is a recipe for a headache!

Summary

While you’re taking on a big project by building your dream kitchen, it’s an incredibly rewarding one. Finally, putting together your perfect kitchen with modern kitchen cabinets will really make you feel at home. We hope this post helps you move from initial planning to layout, to finally putting a team together to make your dreams a reality!