5 Kitchen Questions
What’s the best way to maximise storage in my kitchen?
As our name suggests, we work mainly in London, so kitchens are often smaller, and we have a lot of experience in the need to maximise for efficient and useful storage.
Many kitchens are badly designed, with a lot of unusable space, bad access, and strangely sized cupboards that may end up being little used even when storage is limited.
Make sure that whoever is supplying your kitchen will make the cabinetry to fit your space rather than playing “fill the gaps” with standard-sized cabinets.
Take the kitchen all the way up to the ceiling. We often see wall cabinets topped with little-used kitchen equipment anyway, all gathering a good coating of grease and dust.
Don’t do this
Do this
Smaller plinths and higher worktops allow bigger base cabinets, look better, and save your back. Standard worktop heights are often low for today’s taller population.
Make full use of interior storage solutions. This is a hugely important area and an often-neglected part of kitchen design. Make sure your designer is knowledgeable about all the many products that are available and has access to a wide range.
To help in thinking about this, it’s useful to describe the problems that you’re trying to solve. For example, plate storage in base cabinets- one pile behind another. Not only do you have to pull the front ones out to access those behind, but you may well have to kneel on the floor and half climb into the cupboard to get at them! Tall larder cabinets are often a deep dark forest of tins, packets, and mystery guests.
Good drawers vastly improve base cabinet storage. Full extension soft close drawers (we use Blum Legrabox) pull right out so you can see and access everything at once, and take up to 70 kg with ease. There’s a wide array of drawer organisers that help keep things tidy. And those plates can go in plate holders designed to fit in the drawers.
Pan drawers are perfect for plate storage, especially with these plate holders.
Tall larder cabinets often have a similar problem and there are various forms of pull-out baskets and shelves so that all the produce you’re storing is brought out into the light for you to select with ease. The Blum Space tower (a tower of drawers) is particularly good, as it gives access to provisions from all three sides (left, right and even the front) and can be manufactured in any height, width or depth (depending on your supplier).
Finally, always line the bases of any of these moving parts with non-slip mats, so things don’t slide around when you open and close them.
What is the best worktop to choose?
There’s no simple answer to any of these questions of what the best material is. It always comes down to personal taste and what your aim is. I’ve highlighted a few of the most common choices here:
Quartz (engineered stone)
This is an exceptionally durable and easy-to-care-for surface, and is the most popular choice with our customers. It comes in a huge array of colours and finishes, including different textures. Prices also vary dramatically, so it’s always a good idea to make sure you know where your choice is situated in the range. Cons – they don’t take kindly to hot pans, and although they’re very strong, if they do chip, they’re not easily repairable.
Solid surface (e.g. Corian)
This is a good choice for hygiene, as it can be made completely seamless, including the join with the sink. The back corners can be coved so that cleaning is easy, and they are non-absorbent and antibacterial. Whilst they are not as tough as stone, and can be scratched they are very repairable. If scratches appear these can be sanded out, and bigger damage can be invisibly repaired by replacing the damaged section. Although they can pick up what looks like stains, it’s usually just a matter of using the right cleaners. They are however even more susceptible to heat than man-made stone, and hot pans should never be put directly on them. If you want a solid surface sink, then its often a good idea to get one with a stainless-steel base, especially if you are having a boiling water tap installed.
Seamless Glacier White Corain Worktops with Integreated Corian Sink & Drainer Grooves from our Walthamstow kitchen.
Wood and other natural materials (eg marble)
My take on these types of tops is that it depends on your attitude. If you like natural materials and are happy to let the wear and tear show over time, then these will suit you. They do need more looking after; wooden worktops need regular oiling to look their best, especially around the sink. I would highly recommend using full-plank wooden worktops (rather than the incorrectly labelled “butchers’ block” worktops, made up of hundreds of tiny pieces), both for the look and because there are far fewer joint lines which are where problems are more likely to occur. I like the history that these worktops adopt -you can see their age, unlike a stone top which will look much the same in a few years as it does today.
What are the benefits of having an island in my kitchen?
Everyone wants an island! Sadly, it’s not always possible – and sometimes it’s better to design a kitchen well without one than squeeze one in for the sake of it.
If you can have one, though, there are a few clear benefits. It provides extra storage and work surface and ensures a more efficient working triangle, keeping the area compact (rather than spreading it all out along the walls).
It draws people together by allowing you to face guests and family members as you are working, rather than the wall. It can provide seating if an overhang is designed into it creating a real social hub.
For this reason, we often put the hob on the island, opening up the cook’s experience to the rest of the family. So as not to disrupt this sense of space and openness we recommend hobs with integrated extraction (Bora do a fantastic range of these) rather than downdraft or ceiling-hung extractors.
A compact island with extra-wide drawers and seating
I’m designing my kitchen on a budget - what should I not cut back on?
Swiss-Made Peka Corner Solution
There’s no good reason to cut back on quality. Always use the best hardware. There’s a lot of wear and tear on these moving parts, and they can quickly cause problems. We always use Blum for hinges and drawers, and good quality brands like Kesseboehmer and Peka for internal storage solutions.
The bigger companies can make small savings add up to a lot over the thousands of kitchens they’re selling. On an individual kitchen, however, the saving is negligible, but the deterioration in quality is significant.
Make sure you get the installation done by a specialist kitchen installer. This is an essential part of making the kitchen look good and making sure it will last. A cheap kitchen professionally installed is better than an expensive kitchen that’s badly fitted. There’s a level of precision involved in doing a good job that demands experience, expertise, and the correct tools.
If you need to cut back on the budget, then it’s better to look at your specific requirements. You may have a clear idea of the look you are trying to get – but is it possible to find another route to it? If you have a supplier you can trust, then they should be able to find ways of saving money without compromising quality. Worktops are often the first place to start. Door type – is there an alternative that will look similar but cost less? Perhaps you can have a shelved larder unit instead of fitting a pull-out. It would be better to have a simpler solution than to use a cheap and flimsy mechanism.
What do you see as the current trends in kitchens?
Trends vary across the country and even across London. Simplicity is the key, as it has been for some years now. The more contemporary look is some form of handleless kitchen, whilst those wanting something more traditional are keeping it pared back with the honest simplicity of the Shaker style.
Paint colours are still often muted and natural, and almost exclusively matt – we haven’t done a gloss kitchen for several years now. There is more experimentation with colour now though, often as part of a two-tone kitchen where one part (eg the island) might be a brighter or darker colour, and the rest a lighter shade (see our Shoreditch kitchen).
There’s a trend towards mixing the minimalism of the pure matt fronts with natural materials. For example, in our Bermondsey kitchen, you can see the matt light grey doors mixed with the natural brick, copper splashback and Dekton cement-look worktops. This goes together with the industrial look, where people aren’t afraid to use materials and styles that would have seemed out of place in a domestic setting until recently.
Wall cabinets are often shunned, or at least used sparingly, as people are aiming for a less “fitted” look, and want more of a sense of space in the room. Even in London, where space is at a premium, we’re often looking for more creative solutions. Open shelving is very popular, often made to match the rest of the kitchen. I particularly like the very shallow open-ladder-style shelving which can fill bigger areas without taking up too much space into the room. We make the worktops a little deeper and bring it right down to the surface. There’s no loss of working area, and we retain the openness above at the same time. Where we are using wall cabinets, we often start them higher up and take them right up to the ceiling, so that there’s more space above the worktop which helps to open up the work area.