Light Tips for a Bright Kitchen
When designing a new kitchen, often the aspect towards the back of your mind is lighting. It is easy to forget how lighting can entirely change the mood and feel of a room, and whether natural or artificial light will paint your new room in the best light.
There are a number of options you can take. The first is natural light, and many find this the best option. Windows and glass doors are standards in the modern kitchen, but you might consider a skylight. The feel of natural light throughout the day can make your kitchen feel more homely, and can be a defining feature when used correctly.
However, it is always important to remember that when night falls, your bright room can easily become shadowy. Varied lighting is important to ensure that come nightfall, the room feels just as comfortable and beautiful as during the daylight. The standards of lighting are fairly well known, but important to the new kitchen is how the design fits the aesthetic. Chandeliers or lampshades can add interesting features, and even give a glittery glow.
LED lights are becoming increasingly popular as alternatives. Strip lighting underneath cupboards, or even in cabinets or around a TV can give a subtle, but more natural, feel to a room. Perhaps the best compliment to natural light is the LED system, especially due to the long-lasting nature of LED bulbs - almost 50,000 hours compared to the 1,200 hours of incandescent bulbs. (as well as a dramatically reduced wattage, saving on power!)
Should you want to go even further, many companies are incorporating technology into the LED bulbs. Hue, a part of Phillips, offers LED bulbs that can be controlled to change colour and shades to compliment the room, at the touch of a button. Connecting to a smart phone app, the bulbs can dim, flash, pulse and do anything you want, fitting directly into current fittings. Perhaps a more dazzling option, these will surely add a bit of flare to your new room!
A final option comes from the design of your kitchen itself. Lighter materials and paints will make a room feel lighter itself - light quartz worktops, a pale painted wood for the cabinets and a light colour on the walls will ensure a light room. The difference is, you get to choose. Designing your kitchen is a fun and personalised experience, and Herringbone Kitchens ensure that your design is what comes first.
Useful Tricks for Increasing Storage Space
Most of the time clients come to us knowing they want a specific item in their kitchen like an island, range oven or American fridge. We will start the design process around this. But practically speaking, one of the most important things in your kitchen is not the big ticket items, but how usable the kitchen is. Storage space makes a big difference to the day to day living of your kitchen. Being able to access everything you need without having to go in to the loft to get your bread maker out a couple of times a year is useful, and who knows, might mean you will start making bread more often. Below are our top 5 ways of increasing storage space.
1. Taller larder units can add extra space.
2. Internal drawers make things easier to access within a larder.
3. Integrated bins not only hide the bin, but also can offer recycling compartments.
4.Deep drawers allow space to easily access bigger items.
5. Magic corners are a great way of not increasing storage, but making hard to reach storage areas, usable.
Increase the Value of your Home: Put in a Dream Kitchen
One of the easiest ways to instantly increase the value of your property is to update your kitchen. As most estate agents know, kitchens sell homes- they are the heart of the home, and even if a house is magnificent, if it has a bad kitchen the value of the property, as well as potential buyers, starts to dramatically decrease.
A recent study by Strutt & Parker, found that what buyers are looking for most in terms of 'wishlist items' when purchasing a new property include an Aga, a kitchen island/breakfast bar, and a Smeg fridge. More than any other quality, it was the kitchen that belonged in most people's wishlist items.
Kitchens are the most personal and well-used area in the home, many potential buyers will try to imagine themselves living in your home, and if they can not see themselves in the kitchen, this may be a major turnoff.
Updating your kitchen iseasier than you think, and one that will benefit both your family and your pocket.
Repainting Doors? Pros and Cons
Kitchens are like cars, they can make a statement about your personality, you use them everyday and eventually, after years of wear and tear and changes to modern living, they will need replacing.
Often times when a family is in need of a new kitchen, but do not think they can afford one yet, they consider painting their kitchen cabinets and purchasing new worktops. This can be an excellent way to keep with recent trends if your kitchen is in good working order and the layout of your kitchen maximises space and how the modern family lives. There are a couple of cons though that need to be considered before you invest in repainting or replacing doors, you may be surprised at some of the hidden costs and just how much work it is to repaint a kitchen.
Problems can include getting a finish that lasts. Generally a DIY painted kitchen wears incredibly quickly. When you are painting on top of an already used cabinet, you need to spend a lot of time cleaning, sanding and then sanding and cleaning again, all before the first layer of your new paint colour goes down. The entire process is very labour intensive. Even if your cabinets appears clean, there will be layers of grease accumulated that has built up over time. It is very difficult to actually remove all of these layers to a professional looking standard. This becomes even more difficult if your kitchen cabinet has beading.
Repainting a kitchen can provide a short term cosmetic update, like repainting a car. But it is not fixing the real issue, this may be the layout of the kitchen, your doors have dropped and no longer line up next to each other, worktops scratch and dent, or the carcass to the cabinet has blown.
The main reason people chose to replace a kitchen instead of repainting the doors is to meet the needs of modern family day living, like including breakfast bars and islands with seating areas for a more sociable kitchen, redesign to include more worktop space or to fit in appliances, deeper drawers for ease of use, and magic corners for better use of space. Most kitchen companies offer a free measure and design service so before investing in repainting your doors, it is worth getting a quote on what the cost of a new kitchen would be.
What to Consider When Designing a New Extension with Kitchen
Here at Herringbone Kitchens many of our Clients come to us because they are planning on building an extension that will include a kitchen. Client's come at varying stages of the planning, but normally it is best to get a rough idea of space from a designer before you even begin your build. We have helped design kitchens 10 months before the first brick for an extension is ever laid. Sometimes the simplest changes in the planning phase can make a very big difference to the end result of your kitchen and it is good to have your kitchen designer to help from the very beginning.
For example, the positioning of doors and windows can make a big difference to a layout of a kitchen. While our cabinets are bespoke, some things in a kitchen can never be completely bespoke, like the depth of a dishwasher. 100 ml can make a big difference in the design, and it could mean if a kitchen can turn a corner or finish against a wall.
Think of the big items, do you want an island or american fridge freezer? Would you want your dining table in the extension? It helps when Client's know exactly what they want to include in their dream kitchen, and we can begin by working around these. Other things we like to help you consider is the smaller things like lighting and plug sockets, would you want 3 pendents over your island, or a chandelier above your dining table? Would you want an outlet in your island? We specialise in the detail, and that is what will make your kitchen more beautiful and functional.
We love when people come to us with ideas for their kitchen extension, and can work with you to design your kitchen from your building plans. Come stop in the Canterbury studio or contact us through the website.
Recently completed kitchen in Sevenoaks, Kent