No matter what kind of home you currently live in, the kitchen is almost certainly one of your most important rooms. Your kitchen is where you prepare your meals and, more often than not, also functions as a gathering space for your family and guests.
Updating your kitchen is one of the easiest ways to add surplus value to both new and older homes. Unsurprisingly, some contractors recommend that you update your kitchen every 10 or every 15 years. This will help ensure that your appliances are entirely up to date and that your kitchen remains as aesthetically appealing as possible.
Kitchen design can be an incredibly exciting process. However, if you have never completed a renovation before, it can be difficult to know where to begin the process. Before focusing on the specifics involved in the kitchen remodeling process, you will want to identify your key goals and objectives you hope to achieve.
One of the most common purposes of a kitchen remodel is to make the kitchen feel larger. Even if your kitchen has an above-average amount of square footage, your appliances and furniture may be causing the kitchen itself to feel rather cramped. Fortunately, there are quite a few things you can do to help make your kitchen feel larger than life. In this article, we will discuss ten strategies that can help make your kitchen seem a bit bigger.
1. White cabinets
Generally speaking, lighter colors tend to make rooms appear larger while darker colors tend to make rooms appear to be more intimate. One of the easiest—and cheapest—things you can do to make your kitchen feel larger is to paint the cabinets white. Replacing your counters, finishes, and appliances with lighter alternatives will also have a similar effect.
2. Open floor plans
Open floor plans cause rooms to feel less congested and also increase the amount of your square footage you can feasibly use. If you are building a kitchen from scratch, you should incorporate an open floor plan. While separating the breakfast and food prep areas used to be popular, the past few decades of design have reversed this general practice.
3. Built-in appliances
The appliances in your kitchen will either be detached (and can be placed anywhere) or will be built-in. As you might guess, detached appliances almost always take up more room than built-in appliances and also cause the room to feel smaller. Using built-in appliances will make it much easier to control the general flow of the room and also increase your use of floor space.
4. Eliminate walls
As suggested, distinctive spaces were once very popular among architects, but after the mid-century modern movement, the lines between these spaces has been somewhat blurred. Many older kitchens have excessive walls, hanging cabinets in undesirable spaces, and unnecessary doors that can cause a space to feel quite cramped. While taking down a wall can be relatively expensive, it is also one of the best ways to open up an otherwise cramped living space.
5. Creative ceilings
If you want people to feel as if a room as spacious, you should do all that you can to divert their attention away from their ordinary line of sight and towards the ceiling. A room with 10-foot ceilings, for example, will feel much larger than a room with 8-foot ceilings, even if the square footage of the room remains unchanged. While you might not be able to feasibly raise your ceilings, ceilings with glass, geometric patterns, and possibly a skylight will help make the overhead space a bit more open.
6. Open shelving
Cabinets are useful for storing things out of sight, but they are also unnecessarily bulky. To reduce the amount of space being occupied by cabinets, consider investing in an open shelving scheme that allows you to display your dishes and cookware out in the open. Replacing just a few cabinets with open shelves will increase the visual volume of the room without eliminating any of your storage space.
7. Slimmer fixtures
In the United States, appliances tend to be much larger than they are in Europe, but the recent revival of minimalism in design has seen this trend beginning to reverse. Ovens, dishwashers, fridges, and microwaves are just a few of the appliances that have many slimmer and sleeker alternatives readily available. While switching to slim may not be practical for some larger families, this is an efficient decision that makes a lot of sense for smaller households.
8. Ample lighting
Just as bright colors cause a room to feel larger, light also has a very similar effect. When given an option, you should attempt to increase the level of available lighting in your kitchen to the greatest extent you feasibly can. When possible, try to add some additional windows. If new windows aren’t an option, adding some additional lights beneath the cabinets or near the ceiling will also help amplify your current space.
9. Mirrors/reflective surfaces
Using mirrors to make rooms seem larger is an age-old design strategy that has withstood the tests of time. A simple mirror can cause a room to potentially twice and large and, when positioned strategically, the use of multiple mirrors can cause a space to feel as if it is “infinite.” While you don’t want your kitchen to feel like a carnival funhouse, a few small mirrors can really go a long way. Additionally, consider using other surfaces that are well-polished or exceptionally reflective.
10. Clean lines
Using clean, straight lines throughout the kitchen will make your space feel much simpler and, consequently, relatively larger. Horizontal lines are excellent for making a room feel wider while vertical lines are useful for making the space seem taller. Curved or abstract lines, on the other hand, will cause the space to feel rather cramped.
Conclusion – 10 ways to make your kitchen look bigger
Your kitchen is a part of your home that you will likely spend a lot of time and, naturally, this is a space that you will want to be sure is completely comfortable. While the tips in this article might be just part of a much more comprehensive renovation project, making these adjustments can certainly make your space appear larger.
