10 Kitchen Design Mistakes to Avoid When Planning

The kitchen is the heart of a home, and planning it requires great care. Sometimes, however, it turns out that after the kitchen is completed, everything is not as ideal as it initially seemed. Here are ten major mistakes to avoid when planning your kitchen.

1. Measurement

Did it happen that the ordered work surface is lower than planned or the windowsills are too thick? Does the refrigerator not fit into the intended space, do the kitchen cabinet doors open against each other, or does the open door of the dishwasher prevent you from standing at the sink at the same time? This is due to incorrect measurements. This is one of the biggest reasons why it's worth using the help of a professional kitchen designer or construction specialist.

2. Space Consideration

When planning a kitchen, it may happen that on paper there seems to be enough space on the work surface, but when you place the coffee maker, blender, and toaster, it becomes clear that nothing else will fit on the table. You should consider an ideal place in a shelf or cabinet for appliances right away to keep the work surface clean. It's very unpleasant to hold a shopping bag in your hands every time you come home from the store when putting food in the refrigerator or placing it on the floor instead of conveniently resting it on the table.

3. Furniture Placement

The key to kitchen layout lies in placing the sink-stove-refrigerator triangle close to each other, as this saves many unnecessary steps and movements. The path between these three should be obstacle-free and shouldn't be too narrow. Another common mistake is too many open shelves. They can give a sense of openness and look fantastic, but you need to be honest with yourself: do you want every spice jar, handle cup, and ketchup bottle to be visible to everyone? If you plan open surfaces, place things on shelves or glass cabinets that you're truly proud of and hide the remaining "treasures" traditionally behind closed doors.

4. Poor or Incorrectly Directed Lighting

Every kitchen should have three types of lighting: general lighting, task lighting above the table and work surface, and accent lighting that highlights the most beautiful design elements proudly. If you skip the last two types of lighting, the kitchen will look too sterile and ordinary. The goal is to make the lights work so that there's sufficient lighting for each activity — chopping, frying, eating, doing dishes, and reading the newspaper.

5. Trash Can in the Wrong Place

By its nature, a trash can is not a particularly eye-catching object. Therefore, the best solution would be to plan a closed cabinet for the trash can from the beginning, but you should make sure that food and spices don't end up in the same cabinet and dishes aren't too close either — it's simply not hygienic. Rather, place household chemicals and brushes-dustpans-rags in the same cabinet.

6. Too Few Outlets

Even in the kitchen, we occasionally need an outlet to charge our phone and tablet, or the idea might come up to add a small screen on the kitchen wall for recipes or to watch your favorite series. You may not be able to plan for such things in advance, but it's better to have extra outlets than to have ugly extension cords running across the kitchen.

7. Poor Ventilation

If you come home from work and smell the food fried the day before yesterday in the kitchen, it's clear that the ventilation has failed. Poor quality air purifiers simply circulate air around the room instead of cleaning it. A good ventilation system helps improve indoor air quality, keeping the kitchen cleaner and preventing grease and other odors from spreading throughout the house. Also, good ventilation extends the life of kitchen appliances by keeping the air in the room cooler.

8. Excessive Spending

A rule of thumb is that kitchen costs shouldn't exceed 20% of the entire house budget. Unfortunately, it's more likely that construction costs will go higher rather than lower, so it would be wise to keep a log of expenses and save some money for unexpected expenses. It would be unfortunate if a nice kitchen with good furniture had to be abandoned due to lack of funds to buy a stove or lighting.

9. Too Trendy versus Too Boring Kitchen

Striking pink or high gloss might seem very trendy and beautiful at some point, but most likely these will also become tiring to the owner after five years. If you're also sure that blue will be your favorite color even years later, an extreme color could become an obstacle at the time of sale, for example. True, the same doesn't make much impression on anyone (and probably not on you either) to live in a completely gray or boringly beige space. Recommendation: stick to your design wishes, but let experts advise you.

10. Too Much Stainless Steel

Although you might really like stainless steel tones and want to choose your refrigerator, oven, stove, and dishwasher with exactly this finish, remember that cleaning them is not the easiest. And if you add a stainless steel microwave, toaster, and pans on top, the room loses its coziness and is replaced by excessive sterility.

Article source: Moodne Kodu