The Magic of Colors

Colors have impressive impact on your kitchen space. If you spend a huge amount of money on cabinetry but fail to choose proper colors, you will end up with an unpleasant kitchen and a big waste of money.

Following simple questions will help you to come up with the decision to choose right selection of materials.

· How big is my kitchen?

· Is my kitchen sunlight oriented?

· How high is my ceiling?

· What are the flooring color and wall color?

Answers to these questions will help you to find out the right design and materials for your cabinets. If your kitchen is small and you choose the dark color, so you will make it looks smaller. But if you have large space maybe it is better to choose darker rather than brighter color to have a warm cheerier space.

If your kitchen is exposed to the sunlight, darker shades and texture could be helpful to diminish the sunlight reflection and keep the lights balanced in your space.

Generally, cooler and lighter colors make the space bigger and brighter while dark colors make it smaller, warmer and bring the ceiling down. Choosing grain direction or texture horizontally or vertically makes you feel your kitchen is longer with lower ceiling or smaller with higher ceiling.

As an example, if you have rectangular space you can make it look more square by choosing either the longer side walls a brighter color or small walls darker colors. That is the power of illusion about a changed space.

Benchtops is another key material which plays an important role in your kitchen design. Since benchtops are at the eye-level, it affects the huge portion of your kitchen design which can make it impressive or mediocre. A good cohesion or contrast between benchtops and cabinets can bold your cabinets design perfectly.

Do not forget the power of accent color. Accent colors are really helpful in your design space. You can match accent colors with your decorative items, kitchen appliances, curtains or anything that is not perfectly matched with your dominant and subdominant design colors. Handles and Knobs would be good examples of the items to create the accent color to your design.

Kitchen Work Triangle

Kitchen work triangle is a concept that advise where to locate three main kitchen appliances, Refrigerator, Sink, and Stovetop. The concept refers back to 1920s when Gillbert, an industrial psychologist and engineer, studied on practical kitchen layout which was based on the motion saving and finally invented circular routing. Later the university of Illinois school of architecture developed the concept of work triangle by which each point of the triangle indicates the location of Sink, Refrigerator and stovetop.

According to concept, the ideal distance between each points is Min 1.2m & Max 2.7m and perimeter of the triangle should be between 4m to 7.9m respectively.

There might be some exceptions based on your actual kitchen layout. For example, the triangle theory is not applicable for In-line shape kitchen but still we can apply motion saving concept by finding suitable location of those three appliances and categorising cabinets efficiently.

Kitchen Layout Inspiration

Kitchen Layout Inspiration

kitchen layout determines the ease of use and how utensils and appliances are accessible in the kitchen. By the suitable layout you can diminish the daily consumption of your energy and reduce body fatigue in long term. A good design kitchen helps you to move, bend and carry things less. Imagine what would happen if your dishwasher is located away from kitchen sink? how would you feel after each time loading and unloading the dishwasher?

Thus, it would be a good idea to think and categories your kitchen layout accordingly in advance. Primarily, there are five categories of usage in every kitchen.

A: Food & Consumable Section including fridge and pantry

B: Cookware Section including kitchen utensils and cutlery sets

C: Washing Section including sink, bin, dishwasher and detergent storage area

D: Pre-cooking Section

This area is usually used for making salad cutting, peeling and chopping to make everything ready for cooking. It is a good idea to be located near section 3 and 5.

E: Cooking section

When everything is ready to cook, you need an area by where everything is gather together and makes your cooking enjoyable. This is the most suitable area to locate oven, cooktop stove and microwave close to each other.

Based on the house plan each kitchen cabinets might have its own unique plan.

Most common kitchen layouts are, G shape, In-Line, Galley, L shape, Parallel or island and U shape kitchen. you can enjoy having an Island in your kitchen if you have enough room in any of the mentioned one.

Most Common Kitchen Layout