When choosing your own fitted kitchen, it is easy to lose track of the overall design, and to become overfaced with the challenge of making the project a reality. There are several ways of ensuring that your involvement in the process is reflected in the design, while also remaining flexible to changes in either your budget or your tastes. The key to this confident outlook is in thinking about design – in a sense calling to mind the various elements of your fitted kitchen in a workable manner.

However technically-minded we may or may not be, it is certainly possible for us to form a preliminary ‘sketch’ of a kitchen design that suits us; by ordering a few brochures and visiting a few stores we can begin to realize a shape and a unified feel that may be built essentially around any aspect of the design: kitchen cabinets, worktops, specific lighting – all of these things can be the starting point from which the picture of the finished kitchen begins to grow.

From a loose portfolio of ideas (brochure cuttings, photographs from stores), we will begin naturally to think about the specifics and how they are relevant to our personal needs – call it a brief, a plan, at this stage it’s just a kind of list of the storage space, appliances, surfaces, finishes and fittings that we think are more suited to our own needs and tastes. As each kitchen is different in its positioning, shape, and size, we can begin to be more selective, and trim down the design to suit the space it will inhabit.

After getting a fairly good feel for the kind of fitted kitchen we want, we may still have further questions that need answering in order to reach that perfect design – after all, as good as the in-store kitchens and brochure pictures may be, the correct blend of interior aspects and practical elements is hard to achieve. But, as we’re thinking about design already, we’re one step ahead in providing ourselves with the solutions.

Browsing a few websites offering fitted kitchens, we’ll find that the better companies offer a ‘free design visit/consultation’ service. By arranging a consultation, we can openly and frankly lay down our vision for the fitted kitchen we’re thinking about, and establish a kind of creative space in which ideas can be bounced back and forth. The bottom line for design consultants is the preservation of the picture we have of the fitted kitchen, so again we are strengthening our initial vision with the experience of trained, impartial professionals.

We might consider this further and find that the in-store fitted kitchen examples and the brochures are the product mostly of thinking about and talking about design; the texture and finish of the cupboards may be anchored around a striking worktop as a centrepiece, for example – there is a choice being made, and whether or not we want to think of ourselves as customers-cum-designers at all, these choices will be the aspects of the finished fitted kitchen that really come to life and make this most central space of the home truly unique.

By: Katie Brunt

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