It’s easy to start planning a new kitchen with colours, benchtops and a Pinterest board that’s getting slightly out of hand.
But before you get to any of that, there’s a more important question to answer:
How do you actually use your kitchen?
A kitchen can look incredible, but if you’re walking from one end to the other every morning just to make a coffee, or the kids are permanently under your feet while you’re trying to cook dinner, good looks will only get you so far.
Here are a few things worth thinking about before the designing begins.
How do you cook?
Are you a one-pan-and-done kind of household, or does dinner involve every pot, appliance and available centimetre of bench?
Think about the way you move between the fridge, pantry, sink and cooktop. Where do you prep food? Where do you naturally put things down? Do two people often cook at the same time?
Then there are the bigger decisions. Is one oven plenty, or would a second make life easier when you’re entertaining, feeding a crowd or attempting the annual logistical exercise that is Christmas lunch?
How you cook should have a big influence on how your kitchen is laid out.
Where does the coffee machine live?
It sounds like a small detail. Until you use it three times a day.
The same goes for the toaster, air fryer, blender and all those other appliances that somehow earn permanent residency on the benchtop.
Deciding what you want left out, and what you’d rather hide away, can help determine everything from cupboard configuration and appliance garages, to where the power points need to go. Discovering there’s nowhere sensible to plug in the coffee machine after the kitchen is installed, is not ideal.
What about the kids?
For family kitchens, it’s worth thinking about how everyone uses the space, not just the person cooking.
Maybe the kids need easy access to cups and snacks without entering the main cooking zone. Perhaps the island doubles as the homework desk. Or you want somewhere they can pull up a stool and tell you an extremely long story while you make dinner.
Little decisions like these can make a busy kitchen work a whole lot better.
Do you entertain?
If friends and family regularly end up gathered around your kitchen, design for it.
That could mean extra seating around an island, a drinks area away from the main cooking zone, a second oven, or simply enough bench space to put out a platter without sacrificing your entire prep area.
Because no matter how comfortable the lounge is, everyone seems to end up standing in the kitchen anyway.
Don’t forget the boring stuff
Bins aren’t exactly the glamorous part of designing a new kitchen. Neither is figuring out where the recycling, tea towels, chopping boards or baking trays are going to live.
But these are often the details you’ll appreciate most once you start using it.
Think about what needs to be close to the sink, what belongs near the cooktop, where the dishwasher should sit and which things you reach for every single day.
A good kitchen gives all of them a home, and preferably one that doesn’t involve opening four cupboards to find it.
Start with you
There’s no single layout, appliance list or configuration that makes the perfect kitchen.
The best ones are designed around the people using them. So before worrying too much about what’s on trend, think about what would make your kitchen work better for you.
Once you’ve got that sorted, you can get back to the fun stuff. Like deciding between those 37 shades of white.
