The kitchen is the heart of the home. It is one of the few rooms that all family members get to share, so it is important that your kitchen is designed with the convenience and needs of each family member in mind. First, your kitchen should be suited for any other person at home to sit around you when cooking and comfortably share a meal while you spend quality family time together. Second, two people should be able to cook in the kitchen at the same time, irrespective of what each person chooses to cook.
If you are one of the homeowners whose kitchen has not been friendly to spend time in it with family, the good news is that Penn Construction + Design has expert kitchen designers that know the best solutions to all the problems you are currently facing in your kitchen.
From ensuring adequate seating around the kitchen island, which encourages your friends and family to share meals, to choosing a layout that will accommodate high foot traffic on days your kitchen gets crowded, this article will walk you through expert design ideas to make your kitchen more family-friendly. The following are friendly kitchen ideas for your family:
Ample seating
Sometimes cooking takes hours, therefore, if you want to encourage more company in the kitchen while cooking is going on, you will need to include a seating area in your kitchen design. You can fix a dining table with adequate seats in one corner of your kitchen or get counter-height barstools around your kitchen island. This makes it easy for everyone to seat, feel relaxed, chat, and spend quality family time during meal prep.
With seats in the kitchen, when the cook needs to wait for their cooking to simmer, they can easily find spots to sit in the kitchen and monitor what they are cooking closely rather than stepping out at intervals to seat in the living room.
Easy-to-clean surfaces
Compared to the other rooms in your home, your kitchen is more likely to take a lot of liquid and solid stains from food preparation. You can use low-maintenance materials such as Quartz and Marble for your countertops because they are easy to clean. You will neither need to use a special cleaning product to clean your countertops nor will you have to spend plenty of time taking off stains. All you need is gentle cleaners such as dish soap, water, and a microfiber cloth. Other considerations include washable bar stool seat covers and easy-to-clean floorings such as porcelain or natural stone tiles.
Ample and accessible storage
A family kitchen always needs to have enough consumables and cutleries to go around when all family members are at home at the same time. When designing your kitchen, you need to put some thought into incorporating storage ideas that will make room for all your consumables, dishes, pantry items, pots, and pans. Efficient kitchen storage ideas include walk-in pantries, drawers, kitchen island cabinetry, and pot hangers.
In addition to ample storage, your kitchen storage should be customized to be functional to the needs of each family member. For example, for a self-sufficient kitchen that is friendly to your kids, you may want to install pull-out drawers in your cabinets so that your kids can easily reach their cereals and other consumables.
Double-bowl sink
There are days when two persons may need to wash at the same time; having a single-bowl sink will make using the kitchen less convenient for everyone involved at such times, while on the other hand, a double-bowl sink will definitely allow both persons to enjoy using the kitchen. In addition, a double-bowl sink will allow you to conveniently dedicate one side for food preparation while using the other to wash dirty dishes.
Open layout plan
Due to the absence of barriers between the kitchen and its surrounding areas, open-concept kitchens effortlessly bring the family together. For example, during meal preparation, the kids can always seat by the kitchen island to do their homework while the rest of the family can chat with you from where they are seated in the living room.
Natural Light
Natural light sources are great ways to bring warmth into your kitchen. If you want to use the opportunity to add more aesthetics to your kitchen, a skylight is a creative natural light source you may want to try. As the sun moves around, the light reflection also moves around your kitchen, making your kitchen more fun by adding visual interest to the entire room. A garden window is also a brilliant natural light source. Not only do you have light shining through your kitchen, but you also get the opportunity to sundry things by the window as well as grow your own herbs.
Double kitchen islands
If you have a large family and also happen to have the luxury of space, you may want to consider two kitchen islands. One kitchen island will be mainly for food preparation with relevant features such as storage and sink, while the second kitchen island can be a two-tier bar-style island that can be simultaneously used for homework, crafts, and relaxation. Double island kitchens encourage more mixed-use of space, such that friends and family can easily socialize and share conversations while carrying out separate tasks at different zones.
Refrigerator organizer
Refrigerator organizers such as Lazy Suzan, a can organizer, and a refrigerator drawer make your refrigerator more efficient. With proper dividers and drawers, you can store related food items or condiments in the same spot and be more intentional about what needs to be kept in your refrigerator’s warmer and colder parts. Asides from making your refrigerator more functional and aesthetically pleasing, a refrigerator organizer will also put an end to having to push past bottles and containers before finding exactly what you need.
Kitchen command center
Making food plans can be a laborious process. A menu on display can help organize your grocery shopping list and adequately prepare you and your family for the week’s meal plan. Your kitchen command center may have other scheduling components such as calendars, household rules, and kids’ chore rules.
Child-proof
Kitchens are full of sharp objects such as knives, hot surfaces such as the cooktop, heavy dishes, cleaning products, and other kitchen items that may pose potential hazards to your kids. The following are examples of effective child-proof interventions:
- Get a stove guard to enclose your stovetop.
- Get an oven lock that will make it impossible for your child to pull the oven door down.
- Install cabinet latches that keep household cleaners and sharp cutleries off your child’s reach.
Conclusion
Your kitchen significantly influences the kind of memories you create with your family, both on ordinary days and special occasions. Whether you want to create a space where everyone feels comfortable cooking, seating around, and bonding more over a sweet conversation, or you want a kitchen that is functional to the needs of your family and friends during dinner, anniversaries, birthdays, and holiday parties, our team of professional designers at Penn Construction + Design will carefully consider how exactly you intend to use your current space and provide permanent solutions to all your kitchen inconveniences.
In order to be able to personalize your kitchen to meet your family’s exact needs, some of the questions we will ask during the consultation include:
- How frequently do you cook?
- What type of cooking do you mostly do?
- How many residents live in your home?
- On a typical day, how many family members cook in the kitchen at a go?
- How many children or grandchildren live in your home?
- Have these children started preparing their own snacks or meals?
- Do you host large gatherings?
The answers to these questions will serve as our guide when creating a new kitchen that is friendly to your family’s lifestyle. As a leading design-build firm providing kitchen design & renovation services throughout Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs, we pride ourselves on our quality and service. We will work with you to meet your timeline and budget needs while providing an unparalleled customer experience.
Let our professionals manage your project so you can focus on everything else that matters to you, and be relaxed that your project is in good hands. We will take responsibility from the moment you have your idea through the entire kitchen design and build process. Contact us today to get started with turning your dream family kitchen into reality.
