functional kitchen practical edgewood cabinetry

We’ve all seen a beautiful kitchen in a magazine or showroom and been wowed by its beauty and decided that that’s the perfect kitchen for us.

But just how practical would one of those showpiece kitchens be for your lifestyle? When it comes down to designing a kitchen for your home, there are a couple of important things to consider: should you design it based on functionality or looks?

When designing your new kitchen, it’s important to take an honest, realistic look at how you use your current kitchen. If you have a hardworking kitchen that gets used several times each day, you may want to prioritize function over form. This is especially true if you have youngsters helping in the kitchen. Choose cabinets, backsplashes, and counter edges that are smooth and easy to clean with a minimum of grease and crumb catching detail.

Hardware that has lots of detail looks nice in the showroom, but consider how often you need to clean your current kitchen hardware and how much time you’re willing to invest in scrubbing all those pretty details with an old toothbrush!

You can still enjoy beautiful details like that designer kitchen with which you fell in love – careful choice and placement of those details makes all the difference in how functional they will be in your kitchen. Instead of detailed moldings on the cabinets, how about a beautiful crown molding around the ceiling? A porcelain floor tile that looks like hardwood gives you a similar look but is much more forgiving of spills and is easier to clean. Instead of ornate hardware on the cabinets, how about a decorative tin ceiling or copper hood over the stove?

On the other hand, if the most used appliance in your kitchen is the microwave, then go for it. You can enjoy those fine details like dental molding, rustic backsplashes, and live wood counter edges. Even the most ornate hardware will need only the usual cleaning that all hardware should get occasionally. You can even enjoy marble countertops, which are not the best choice for a well-used kitchen. Just be careful of wine spills – they are just as damaging to marble as a child spilling juice!

If you want a beautiful kitchen that satisfies your sense of style, but still makes sense for your family’s lifestyle, contact us.

We can help you design a functional kitchen that meets your desires and your needs.