In a busy family home, a kitchen needs to be a room of multiple purposes. It’s somewhere to cook, somewhere to eat, somewhere to do homework and a place to spend time as a family. Your kitchen doesn’t need to be enormous to accommodate your family, and you don’t need to spend a fortune to get your dream kitchen.
Open Plan Kitchen
Designing your kitchen to be open-plan is a perfect way to make a sociable space for your family. You can have different ‘zones’ – a cooking zone, a dining zone and a relaxation zone. You can use a central island or breakfast bar as a place to eat and do homework, and a comfortable sofa makes the perfect informal seating to chat whilst you prep dinner. The cheapest way to create an open plan kitchen is to knock down the wall between your kitchen and the next room. You can move around your existing units, and create a breakfast bar on a budget using a work surface and table legs.
Country Style
In a country style family kitchen, you replace the island with a round dining table. The beauty of this is that you can move the table around when entertaining. A country kitchen is traditionally lots of white and wood furnishings, and it looks warm and inviting. To create your country kitchen on a budget, paint your units white, swap cabinet handles for wooden ones and source a dining table from a local Facebook group or Gumtree. You may even find the perfect table in your local charity shop.
Rustic
Rustic charm can easily be created with an all-wood kitchen. Shaker kitchens are perfect for this and can be sourced inexpensively second-hand via recommended re-sellers such as Used Kitchen Exchange. You can easily make a rustic kitchen look a little more modern, with wooden flooring, colourful accessories and open shelving. Rustic kitchens can look brilliant when they are a bit industrial. You could strip back the walls to reveal brick work, meaning you save on paint! For the dining area in your rustic kitchen, source a picnic style table and sand down the wood for the best finish.
Contemporary
Clutter won’t work in a contemporary style kitchen, so you need to adopt a minimalist approach. Glossy worktops and sleek edges are ideal in a contemporary kitchen, but you can make them child-friendly by opting for curved edges. You can create a dining area with a table and chairs, so that the family has somewhere to sit and wait whilst food is prepared. Statement lights are a great way to accessorise a contemporary kitchen without adding clutter. If the kitchen is white, accessorise with coloured or tiled splashback – you’ll be surprised at the difference it could make. Tiles can be purchased affordably from DIY stores.
What does your ideal family kitchen look like?
