Top Tips for Planning and Designing your new kitchen

1 February 2017

A new kitchen is an exciting project; it’s the hub of the home, a place where you spend a lot of time. It’s important to get your kitchen design right. Here are Fine Finish’s 8 top tips when planning and designing your new kitchen.

1. Layout, as we prepare food, we naturally move between three places in the kitchen, the sink, cooker and fridge, the ‘work triangle.’ This is a good place to start when beginning your new kitchen design along with how you use your current kitchen, what works, what doesn’t and how you would like to use your new kitchen. In larger kitchens an island can work well, it breaks up the space, adds storage, worktop and can also be provide a seating area. In a smaller kitchen a peninsula can work well as an alternative to an island.

2. Storage, think about your storage needs, make use of every space, bespoke cabinets can be manufactured for awkward or tricky spaces. Consider units up to the ceiling instead of leaving a gap. Deep drawers are great for pots, pans and kitchen appliances to save cluttering up the worktop, all these details should be part of the kitchen design phase.

3. Worktops, what is the right worktop for you? Granite and Quartz looks great but you need to allow for it in your budget. Dekton is heat resistant and available in a great range of colours. Corian is seamless, can be moulded into any shape and is incredible hard wearing. Hard wood looks fabulous and introduces colour and texture but needs work maintaining it and it can become scratched. Laminate is cost effective, versatile and available in a wide range of colours and styles including some that mimic wood and stone very well but without the maintenance of wood and a lower price point than stone.

4. Lighting, think about the amount and type of lighting you need, over head lighting is important and can be a beautiful feature. Lighting under the cabinets will shine light on the worktops so you can see what you are doing. Lighting in the plinths looks great mood lighting. Thinking about lighting at the kitchen design stage can save work and changes later, as everything can be done when the kitchen is fitted.

5. Electrics, think about where and how many power points you need for appliances, TV’s and how many you need on the walls or worktops, it pays to plan ahead.

6. Detail, think about how and where you use items in your kitchen, store breakfast foods near your breakfast bar, make sure your cupboards can internally accommodate them. Make sure you have enough workspace around your dishwasher for loading and unloading. Plan your rubbish and recycling bins, these can be integrated if you prefer.

7. Work surface space, plan space around key areas and appliances, space around the sink area for washing up, around the cooker and the fridge, 15 inches of space around each of these is a good amount.

8. Professional help and advice, the earlier in your project that you involve a kitchen designer the better, they will be able to offer advice, suggestions and help to plan, design and budget for your new kitchen.

At Fine Finish kitchens we offer a full kitchen design service, bespoke kitchen builds and standard units. The benefits of a kitchen manufacturer is that you can combine elements of both. We have been designing and fitting kitchens in Derby, Nottingham and Leicester for 20 years.

Take a look at some of our recent projects here.

Call 0115 984 4121or email sales@finefinishfurniture.co.uk to contact our kitchen design team.

Top Tips for Planning and Designing your new kitchen

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