Top tips for kitchen design

Open plan living has made us rethink how we design a kitchen and ergo the best lighting for a kitchen.

Now, more than ever, we want our kitchens to be integrated into our living space rather than purely functional yet functionality is everything in a kitchen. So how can we achieve a beautiful aesthetic without loosing the much needed functionality?

Make sure your cabinet fronts tie in with your style and colour scheme. Choose handles that make them look like pieces of furniture such as leather or brass handles or make them recede totally by using push open/close mechanisms.

If you can, have a bank of full height cupboards, one as a larder (with pull out shelves), one with an integrated fridge and one for crockery and glassware. This will reduce the need for overhead cupboards.

Design your island bench so it looks like a beautiful piece of furniture, linking the dining area and the kitchen.

Hang stunning pendant lights over the kitchen bench that, again, will create the feeling of a living area as opposed to a ‘functional zone’ these will have the dual purpose of creating a soft ambient light but also kitchen task lighting.

They don’t have to be specific kitchen pendant lights from a purely functional aspect but anything that dresses the area up and draws attention away from the working part of the kitchen.

In the area with the sink and stove top integrate led lights that can be switched on for task lighting and switched off when cooking is finished and all you need is the gentle, ambient light from your sparkling kitchen pendant lights.