Functional Kitchen Design Elements | Practical Top Tips

hi i'm michael from kitchen cider welcome to the channel in this video i'm talking through some functional kitchen design elements a mix of general technical and practical top tips [Music] right to kicking things off consider corners we all know corner cabinets are the worst so first off do you have to have one or can you design your kitchen layout to avoid a corner cabinet sometimes it's more practical to not have a corner and return of cabinets especially if that return doesn't go very far it could be more practical to just put a more useful cabinet just at the end of the run and finish it if you do have to have a corner think about what type of corner cabinet will work best not just for your overall layout as a blind corner cabinet will impact the layout differently to an l-shaped corner cabinet but also which cabinet you find more useful and finally consider installing some corner pull-out mechanisms my personal favorite for blind corner cabinets is the le mans mechanism sometimes called the kidney bean pullout i find it's like having two internal drawers in your corner cabinet you pull them right out to you and you can pull them out individually as well so if i want something that's on that bottom shelf i'm not pulling everything out at me at once i personally find the lemans just the quickest and simplest corner solution next up drawers drawers drawers i'm sure if you've watched any kitchen design video you've heard us all go on about how drawers are more useful than doors and that's because they are although there is a time and a place for a good sized cupboard with a door so make sure you have plenty of good size drawers as part of your kitchen design not just a decent width but also some with a decent depth so some pandora's as well pulling everything out to you so you can see and access things clearly is far more practical and functional than rummaging around on your knees trying to see what you've got buried at the back of a cupboard yes drawers are generally more expensive than doors but in my opinion they're totally worth it so some other personal tips around drawers i really like sink drawers not just because it's a jaw but it's a great way to get that extra little bit of storage space around your sink that's otherwise usually dead space along the same kind of vein i also like using internal drawers in your bottom pan drawer again it creates some additional storage in an area that's often wasted space perfect for pan lids and baking trays slim things like that however i'm not a super fan of internal top drawers unless they're done in a very particular way i don't really like to have to open a drawer to then open another drawer to get to the item that i wanted usually your cutlery i'd prefer to just open the one drawer now i know having an internal top drawer is often to keep the look of two deep drawers consistent on the outside of your cabinets and i'm all for that i'm all for balance and symmetry you know that just make sure that the internal top drawer is one that has a built-in catch or clip on it so when you open the drawer it pulls the internal top drawer out with it then you can unclip it and push it back if you want to get to the stuff in the bigger drawer underneath i think this is especially important if this is your main cutlery drawer as you'll want to be accessing the cutlery far more than you will the stuff underneath so it just eliminates having to open something twice and my last little tip in this drawer section is to get individual pull out drawers in a large ladder-esque cabinet rather than an all-in-one big pull-out mechanism these tool pull-out mechanisms can be quite heavy for one as people usually overload them and could often cause the cabinet door to drop and come out of the line and start to sort of scrape or grind on the bottom and as i mentioned before if i want something from a particular section i don't want to have to pull the whole thing out towards me especially if it's lower down the mechanism is going to be in my face the whole time and to add to that most of these tool mechanisms are attached to the cabinet door so when you pull them out you can't access them from the front because the cabinet door is in your way you have to step to the sides to access them so you need to make sure you've got space to do this so sometimes when you put them at the end of the run it does limit the access a little bit but just to be clear i'm not saying don't ever get these tool pull outs they're definitely more useful than just fixed shelves i just prefer being able to pull things out individually i find it more practical next up cutlery tray in a dishwasher another little personal tip is to get a dishwasher that has a cutlery drawer or tray at the top of it rather than the big basket at the bottom a bit like an internal drawer in a cabinet the cutlery tray utilizes that little bit of dead space at the top of your dishwasher and also eliminates the need for a big bulky basket at the bottom meaning you can fit some bigger pots and pans in the bottom or just simply more dishes i also find the cutlery gets cleaned a little bit better as usually there are these little prongs that separate them so your spoons don't end up spooning one another and not getting cleaned it's a little detail and it might not be for everyone but i think that it's something that makes your dishwasher that little bit more functional and we're all about function right and lastly i've got appliance installation so there are two things here first is being aware of and designing for the hinge position of certain built-in appliances the big culprits here are your microwave and your washing machine here in the uk a lot of the time the washing machine is in the kitchen now there are thousands and thousands of appliances out there but 99 of the time your microwave and washing machine are going to be left hand hinged so the hinge is on the left as you look at it and the door handle is on the right the thing to look out for here is putting these appliances at the wrong end of your run of kitchen cabinets so when you open the door it opens into the kitchen rather than against the wall so it means there's this awkward gap to get into the appliance itself you'll want to position these appliances to the left giving you better access into them when you open the door and this is doubly important if it's an integrated washing machine make sure the cabinet door is hinged on the left and opens the same way that the appliance door opens otherwise you create this same awkward opening gap between the two doors wherever you place it in your kitchen and the second thing with appliance installation is considering the height of the appliances that you're installing the main one here is if you're having any combination of built-in ovens in a tool cabinet it's very popular at the moment to have a full-size single oven with a compact oven or combi microwave above it and usually these will both have drop down doors so make sure that you can safely reach up and into the appliance over the door tool cabinets can be configured in all sorts of ways to either lower or lift up this appliance section so rather than having two deep drawers at the bottom you could lower this appliance section a bit by removing one of those drawers a simple thing like that could mean that you can actually reach in and use your appliances safely if you can i always recommend to go to a kitchen showroom and try out these appliance heights in the real world if you can't get the measurements and mark it on the wall so you can see and get a feel for it at home it's really important to check these things don't just order the standard configuration tool cabinet because it might not work for you so there you go some functional kitchen design elements and top tips have you got any top tips when it comes to functional kitchen design let me know in the comments below so we can all share and learn from them as always thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Kitchinsider

Views: 56,889

Keywords: kitchinsider, kitchen design, functional kitchen, practical kitchen, kitchen design elements, kichen, kicthen

Id: BWFcQPCU3Ys

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022