We can’t add square metres to your kitchen, but we can share a few tricks to making your space look bigger than it is.
Open it up to the living room
This isn’t always an option, and it depends on the layout of the house, but if your kitchen is small and shares a wall with the living room, we recommend knocking it down and expanding your horizons. Yes, the kitchen will still have the same surface area, but the feeling you will have inside it will be entirely different.
If you’re looking for ideas, here’s our post on how to incorporate open kitchens with the living room.
Use light colours
It never fails. Using light colours is one of the easiest ways to visually enlarge a space. When it comes to a kitchen, don’t limit light colours to just the furniture; add these tones to floors, walls and ceilings. You'll see how the whole thing changes!
Ah! And don’t forget that there is life beyond white. You can also use light greys and beiges to lend a feeling of spaciousness. Not to mention using lighter wood finishes.
Embrace minimalism
We’ve already touched on the topic in our Three styles, three drawer fronts post: opting for a minimalist style for your furniture’s doors and fronts will help it look bigger. That means saying goodbye to handles and fronts with mouldings or reliefs and textures in your kitchen.
As an extra trick that will also considerably increase storage capacity, we suggest installing floor-to-ceiling units. Go with a white finish or use the same colour as the rest of the walls to flawlessly blend unit with wall, giving the impression that it doesn’t take up any space.
Wall shelves instead of wall units
Wall units might not work with your kitchen layout and make it look bigger, since they take up a lot of visual space.
Instead, we suggest replacing wall units with open shelves, which tend to be narrower than a piece of furniture and create an impression of lightness and, consequently, of a bigger room. Use them for storing the things you use most in your day-to-day life, like crockery and glasses. And if they’re also visually attractive pieces, they’ll add a casual touch to the entire décor!
Inconspicuous household appliances
This is one of the trends that will continue to be in vogue this year. Integrating electrical appliances is now a must in kitchen interior design, since it provides visual continuity to the entire space.
That said, take special care when choosing the extractor hood; it’s usually at eye level and can “interrupt” the visual aesthetic even more. Choose to build the hood into a piece of furniture or, layout allowing, embed it in the ceiling or incorporate it into the cooking area.
Everything in order
Nothing creates a feeling of spaciousness like tidiness. Not only will it be easier to clean and much more efficient but having a tidy kitchen will also make it look much bigger.
When it comes to exposed furniture or wall shelves, we recommend opting for uniformity. That is, if you use them to store food, take the food (like pasta, rice, etc.) out of its original packaging and put it into containers with the same shape and size.