Kitchen Design Ideas That Will Wow Houseguests

When you talk about designing a kitchen there are two kinds of people. People who dread the idea of the meticulous process required to design a complete kitchen, and the people who love the thought of mapping out every detail of their new kitchen. As someone who falls into the latter category and someone who recently designed a new kitchen, I thought it would be helpful for others to learn from my experience.

Before you dive into the process of designing a new kitchen, there are more than a few things to keep in mind. First off…kitchens are one of the two most expensive rooms in your house to design. Other than some crazy bathrooms, for most people, you will spend more on a kitchen than any other room in your house. Keep in mind that your kitchen is not only loaded with expensive appliances like a refrigerator, stove, microwave and dish washer (and these are just the basics.) Then add in surfaces like flooring, backsplash tile, cabinets and counter tops and don’t forget fixtures like your lighting, sink and faucet; and you’ll see just how quickly it can all add up. This of course assumes you’re doing all the work yourself. If you lack that talent (like me), you’ll be adding in the labor costs of a contractor as well.

My recommendation would be to not focus exclusively on the cost. Do your homework and get contractor estimates, but keep an open mind on appliances, surfaces and fixtures and have some honest discussions about what is most important to you and your family. As a baker, the oven was important to me, however the dish washer was a corner I was willing to cut. These sort of trade-offs can and will save you thousands of dollars.

Once you start to put together many of the details, it’s time to have fun with the design and think about some of the new kitchen features that are available that will wow your friends. I looked at a lot of kitchens in homes on St Albert Homes for Sale and found many really cool ideas that I incorporated into my kitchen wish-list.

My kitchen “wow list” included some really neat features that I found only after visiting a few kitchen design centers and browsing on-line stores. Our kitchen has a modern and clean design so the first item I landed on were automatic opening cabinets to hold our garbage and recycling cans. These cabinets hide the trash and recycling containers and they have a really cool opener that pushed the containers and cabinet doors out when you bump the base of the door with your foot. This keeps the containers out of sight and it makes using the trash easier, especially if your hands are messy.

Next up we chose a slide-in style range with the control knobs on the front and six burners. As an avid baker, this was important to me, and having a slide-in style range made the appliance look more professional, commercial and modern. We chose a matching microwave to complete the look and also a matching specialty cabinet for our stand mixer. This cabinet has a spring-loaded articulating shelf that literally lifts the heavy stand mixer to counter height and locks it into place. This makes the use of this frequently-used appliance much easier and it stores back in the cabinet without any heavy lifting.

Next up, for refrigeration we chose a cabinet-height lighted wine refrigerator and for our regular refrigerator, we went a bit nuts. This refrigerator actually has a camera inside that not only lets you see what’s inside without opening the doors, but you can also check in remotely to see if you’re out of something you need to pick up at the grocery store. This ended up being a useful and wow-inspiring feature as well.

Finally, we chose some really unusual but useful pantry and glassware cabinets. The pantry cabinets feature adjustable height drawers that make it easy to access even heavy items that are in the back of the drawers. This makes for really efficient storage in a really small space. The glassware cabinet doors open vertically instead of horizontally and they feature glass shelves that are lit when you open the cabinet. This makes for a really cool touch and a functional way to find just the right glass.

There are actually a lot more wow-features we chose like under cabinet lighting and a composting garbage disposal, but most of these other details are pretty much hidden and not as obvious as the features I mentioned above. So how did we do?

After a few holiday’s with various family members visiting, I can tell you that I was surprised at what made people say “wow.” I expected some people to be excited by the lighting, cabinet colors and even our sink and faucet. I was less than surprised that the wine refrigerator really lit people up with excitement, and most people were amazed at the ability to look in our main refrigerator remotely using Wi-Fi and the internal camera…but this still wasn’t the favorite. With everything we put into the design of our kitchen, I was surprised that the one feature that everyone ranked as the number one wow-feature of the new kitchen was the auto-opening garbage and recycling cabinets.

Who knew that even with high-tech expensive appliances and other cool features, the wow factor would go to the garbage and recycling. While surprising, this does illustrate an important kitchen design factor….details matter. As you design a kitchen, there will be hundreds of choices to be made and hundreds to details to work out. As you go through that process, it’s easy to get worn out by details, but always keep in mind that it’s the small details that really matter. Kitchen design is all about details, so any time you find yourself worn out, stop…step away and come back to it later when you have more time and patience.

I promise you that the resulting kitchen will not only be worth the time, effort and cost, but it will also go a long way toward creating a design that will wow your houseguests.

Finally, I wholeheartedly recommend you find a way to make the process fun and exciting. Most people will only do a very few kitchen designs in their lifetime, so even it it’s daunting, find a way to make it fun and exciting. In the end, the results will make for a kitchen you can enjoy for decades to come and a kitchen that will wow your friends.