Practical Kitchen Design Tips For A Functional and Stylish Space

At Cook & Bathe, we want your kitchen to feel like the centre of your home. Designing your contemporary kitchen so that it’s both functional and stylish is about incorporating aesthetic solutions to storage, cleanliness, and maximising space.

In this blog, we’ll be going through some classic kitchen design tips and trends that work with almost any interior style, for those home decorators seeking a functional, stylish space. It’s all about planning your layout, having organised storage, and opening up the space to get the most out of it as you can.

Let’s take a look in more detail below at how to achieve a functional, stylish kitchen through your interior design.

Hook Or Magnetic Strips Above Your Countertops

A chic component of mid-century kitchen design is metal hooks, or magnetic frames, attached to the tops of your workspace. This is great for hanging cast iron saucepans, tea towels, scissors and everyday knives. But – make sure your heavy-duty ones, your stainless steel butcher knife and the massive bread cutter for example, are stored safely away in a knife block, which provides a
dded safety and doubles up as a vintage storage solution that will have you feeling like you’re in an old Italian kitchen. 

You can even hang garlic, dried tomatoes and citrus fruit on a rope from the hooks above your countertop, whether for use or pure aesthetic. But the main benefit is you can reach whatever you need from right above you, and free up valuable shelf space for larger items.

Designated Space For Everything

Plates and bowls on one shelf, mugs and saucers on another. However you decide to arrange your utensils, crockery and cooking equipment, make sure the shelf, closet or cabinet becomes their home, for whenever they’re not in immediate use. This will help streamline cleaning as you can mindlessly put them back, and it also helps keep clutter building as you look for spaces to put things.

But what about the cooking equipment that doesn't fit into a neat category? The weird hand-held blending stick, and the lemon squeezer? Find an out-of-the-way storage space to be your ‘odd things’ cupboard. Then, when in doubt, look for what you need there, and keep all your oddballs together.

Integrated Appliances

If you’re working with a smaller space, stepping around clunky worktops, ducking under extended range hoods and bashing into huge dishwashers can quickly make your kitchen feel claustrophobic and somewhere you don’t want to spend much time in. The power of integrated appliances is that they can transform your kitchen into a sleek space that extends the theme of your design, and creates more room without extending anything at all. From integrated range hoods to fridges, it’s a design tip worth exploring to save on those precious metres.

Open Shelving

First thing in the morning, the sound of cupboard doors clanging against each other, then slamming shut, can be enough to start you off on the wrong foot for the day, or even worse if it’s someone else in the house waking you up as they get ready for work. Open shelving can be a dainty, stylish solution for storing your everyday mugs, French press, wine glasses… the items you’re using on rotation so much that putting them behind a closed cupboard door feels like an unnecessarily laborious step in the process of keeping your kitchen tidy.

Statement Lighting

Most of us hate dark, dingy rooms, and an area of the house where you want to especially focus on good lighting is the kitchen. Bright lighting is essential for an open, calming environment, and vital when cooking with sharp utensils. Install a skylight for maximum natural light to enter the room, or pick a large light fixture to illuminate from the centre of the room, which will also work great as an eye-catching statement feature of your interior design.

The Pythagoras Kitchen Triangle

Not a mathematically validated theory, but it makes sense to have the three appliances you’ll be using most in a kitchen together, right? A great way to minimise endless back-and-forth-ing when you’re cooking is to set up your sink, fridge and hob within a triangle, or perhaps have your oven, bin, and countertop within a triangular design.

Think about what you’re typically using or doing most, and try to create a minimal pathway between these appliances, or even better if you can set up an island that lets you simply turn around and take a step to reach each one. It might seem unnecessary now but think about the time it will save you over years of cooking in your kitchen.

‘Ready To Go’ Stations

We’re creatures of habit, and we can derive a sense of peace and homeliness if we put personal stamps in the rooms across our house. Whether your kitchen has space for a few personal areas, or just one ‘station’, designating a small area is a cute and practical way to get what you like all together in one place. For example, if you’re a coffee drinker, set up your beans, your machine, your kettle and your sugar together, or if you’re a religious toast eater, put all your condiments at arm’s reach. 

For the night owls, gather up a bar station with your spirits, shakers and mixers. Then you can look for inspiration on your trolley cart while you ponder what cocktail you fancy at the end of a long day.

****

From lighting to shelving, there are so many ways you can enjoy the best of both worlds when designing a kitchen that is both functional and stylish. If you’re looking for more interior design tips, we’ve got you covered with our blog on all things kitchen design (and some nifty bathroom tricks too!).