3 Kitchen Design Tips to Follow (and 3 Mistakes to Avoid)
By Rochelle Bilow
We don’t have to tell you twice that we consider our kitchens the center of our homes. In this most-important room, both smart, intuitive design and attractive aesthetics are equally important. After all—you won’t just be cooking for your dinner parties and family meals. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that no matter how snazzy a table you set, everyone will wind up hanging around the kitchen island or butcher block (so, uh, make sure you have one). We could talk for days on end about what makes a great kitchen, but here are the most important tips to follow—and mistakes to avoid.
Related: How to Design a Smarter, Better, Easier to Use (and Clean!) Kitchen
Irene Neuwirth uses this table for everything from client lunches to food prep.
Make it Happen
1. Invest in a Multi-Use Table
A well-made, sturdy, wooden table provides more than just a place to eat. Irene Neuwirth, a L.A.-based jewelry designer who devoted a third of her boutique to a kitchen, added a gorgeous walnut table to the space. When not used for client lunches, it becomes an island for prepping. To steal the style, make sure your table is tall enough so you can chop at it comfortably without slouching or hunching over.
Put that booze front and center with a backlit bar.
2. Go Big. Build a Bar
“A kitchen with a full bar? Pretty much my dream come true,” says Adam Rapoport, BA‘s editor-in-chief. When Bon Appétit moved into our new offices, we made sure that our kitchen was stocked with everything required for mixing and fixing drinks: sinks, refrigerators, an ice machine, and, yep, a backlight wall of booze.
Related: How to Make Refreshing, Bubbly Homemade Sodas
Exposed-filament bulbs can make a big impact—or a small one, if they’re on a dimmer.
3. Consider the Dimmer
Take a tip from architect Bryan Boyer, who designed a freelancers’ co-working space in Brooklyn: A dimmer will do wonders for your kitchen space. Turn it up all the way for daytime work and prep, and turn it down low for a dim, sexily-lit dinner party.
Invest in the stuff that really matters—like quality custom woodwork for the most-used areas.
Don’t Do That!
1. Don’t Cut Corners
“I wouldn’t recommend cutting corners on materials; you get what you pay for,” explains Brad Leone, BA’s test kitchen manager. This is especially true for the areas of your kitchen that get the most use, like countertops and floors.
Related: Guilty as Charged: Our Most Shameful Kitchen Confessions
A few open shelves in the BA Kitchen let us show off our goods. The unmentionables are tucked away in cabinets.
2. Make Room for Storage
“We thought it’d be a great idea to have everything on open shelves, but you really do need a place to store the less glamorous items,” explains Boyer. You may want to show off your hand-thrown sake set, but the food processor from 1998? Nobody wants to see that.
Go ahead, paint those walls white. But do yourself a favor and keep the floors a neutral color and material.
3. Resist the Urge to Go Bright White
…Well, on the floors, anyway. Walls and cabinets can be striking when painted a vibrant, bold white, but white floors? Not so much. “I insisted on painting the wood floors white like I’d recently done at home. I should have learned! They’re not the easiest to maintain,” explain Neuwirth.
Photos: Douglas Lyle Thompson
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