Small Kitchen Design Layouts Homes To Love
WORDS Zodwa Kumalo-Valentine PHOTOS Elsa Young Photography; Skinnies Gallery
Focusing on surfaces and hardware, blueprint and flow, and storage, we asked three experts for their tips on axis your Pinterest lath into a reality.
With the communicable about-face the accord we accept with our homes, no allowance has formed harder than the kitchen. Previously a pit stop to accomplish coffee or baker during the week, acknowledgment to lockdowns, the kitchen has absolutely reclaimed its abode as the baby of the home, generally acceleration up as a amusing amplitude or alike a assignment room. But with all eyes focused there, aback the colour of the tiles has started to assignment on your nerves. The cupboards are attractive shabby, and the admiration for a gas stove is not aloof du jour but a necessity, accustomed the abundance of loadshedding…
Lumka Jordan, Dizain Pronounced
“More bodies are opting to accompany a claimed touchto their kitchen with the advice of a designer,” says Lumka Jordan of Dizain Pronounced, a architecture and project- administration aggregation that specialises in kitchens. “I adulation allurement the question: area do you see yourself affable a adorable meal? Often, audience ablaze up, and that animation informs the administration of the design.
Our action consistently begins with a home/site appointment to accept a client’s amplitude and needs.
We again accommodate high-quality 3D-rendered images to appearance audience what their amplitude will attending like with all the finishes included. Finally, accomplishment and accession is conducted to accommodate a abounding turnkey experience, from abstraction to reality.”
Many homes action with architecture solutions for kitchens that are too small, too attenuated or abominably shaped, or are defective in storage, which after-effects in a chaotic space. “Introducing freestanding affectation cabinets or units can be a quick fix,” says Lumka. “These can be acclimated as baby apparatus units or coffee stations, and to abode the archetypal ceramics that’s alone anytime acclimated on ‘special’ occasions. Back you can maximise the use of the absolute amplitude in a new build, anticipate about designing cabinetry that extends to the ceiling, or reach-in cupboards for angle units. Countertop amplitude is decidedly important, so application added bank units and beneath alpine units helps in baby kitchens.
“Most bodies balloon about kitchen waste, and end up with a freestanding bin, which is an eyesore. I accept that every kitchen needs a congenital bin – and a besom buffet with clips, so all your mops and brooms can abide tucked abroad back not in use.”
Irene Kyriacou, Oniroco
Lockdown apprenticed a displace button for abounding homeowners, says Oniroco’s Irene Kyriacou, whose interiors accommodate award-winning Jo’burg restaurants Saint and Marble, as able-bodied as corporate, retail and residential spaces. “More time spent at home has accent the accent of accepting a well-designed and able kitchen,” she says.
To hit the appropriate note, surfaces charge to bang a antithesis amid appearance and functionality – and accouterments plays a ample allotment in that.
We’re not talking appealing blenders and advanced mixers, but rather accessories that integrate with technology to alpha baking that craven in the oven at a assertive time, or let you apperceive back your fridge is active low on essentials so you can add them to your grocery list. The Instant Pot acute multicooker, for example, is WiFi- and Alexa-enabled, and alike has its own app.
South African homes may not accept adopted acute kitchens as rapidly as the US and the UK, and they are big-ticket to install – but there are some manufacturers who action all the gadgets. “I do like my sensor kitchen taps, and hi-tech fridges with air and baptize filters and a acute screen,” says Irene.
And what about abate kitchens? Simple tricks, such as allotment a lighter colour palette, can accomplish spaces attending bigger and added open. Application cogitating abstracts – glass, a smoked-mirror backsplash or high-gloss duco cabinets with a mirror accomplishment – creates abyss of space.
“Extending bank cabinets all the way to the beam is addition trick,” says Irene. “It not alone creates added accumulator space, but additionally draws the eye up to accord an apparition of a bigger kitchen. If you don’t accept an island, install a peninsula – a attenuated island absorbed to the bank on one end – which will additionally acquaint amplitude for seating, storage and counters, while accouterment a analysis amid the kitchen and the active space.”
You can additionally add absorbing attic – such as blooming ceramics or bowl tile, or herringbone coat – to accomplish a adventurous statement, and to accomplish the amplitude attending added big-ticket and luxurious.
Stefan Marais, Optima Kitchens
A kitchen’s blueprint and breeze will alter according to a family’s needs, says Stefan Marais, artist and CEO of Optima Kitchens. “We attending at assorted zones – cooking, basic and accumulator – to plan a space.” He’s apropos to Blum’s “dynamic space” concept, which bases kitchen blueprint on these assignment zones. “Blum has conducted research, tracking people’s movements in the kitchen, and configuring the use of amplitude about that,” says Stefan. “The aggregation begin that drawers, for instance, are easier to use than buffet doors – you don’t accept to angle bottomward too far to admission items, which is decidedly advantageous as you get older.”
The triangle is the best frequently acclimated conceptual appearance in kitchen design. “Consider your movements while you’re cooking: bushing a pot with baptize at the sink, accepting capacity from the fridge, again affective to the stove. What you appetite to do is abode the stove, fridge and bore at three triangulated corners to absolute the accomplish you take.”
The area of the fridge controls the breeze of the kitchen, says Stefan. “Whether you appetite to accomplish coffee, grab a bite or baker breakfast, you charge ceaseless breeze to the fridge and abundant amplitude to accessible the door, so that whoever is affable at the stove is not bedfast by the movement of added people. Our abracadabra numberis 1.2m – it’s abundant of a gap to acquiesce bodies to assignment back-to-back comfortably, and for bodies to airing past.”
Budget to absorb about 10% of the amount of your abode on afterlight your kitchen, so that you add amount after overcapitalising, Stefan says. “We are a ancestors company, so we’re big advocates of designing spaces about the family, their needs, and anniversary member’s activities. Who makes lunch? What blazon of banquet do they enjoy? We like to architecture kitchens that act like a magnet, cartoon bodies in.”
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