Designing your dream kitchen

We caught up with the design team at Drumoak Kitchens to see what to consider when planning a  new kitchen . . .

Embarking on a renovation or a completely new kitchen project is exciting but can be quite daunting too. A kitchen can be one of the biggest and most expensive upgrades that people make to their homes, so it’s important to take the time to explore what you like. 

Pinterest and Instagram are good starting points for gathering ideas and inspiration. Interiors magazines can be useful too, but often the homes and kitchens shown don’t always translate well in terms of space or budget! It helps to have a wish list, a rough floorplan and a good idea of what you want to use the space for before you start visiting showrooms. Having an idea about whether you want a traditional style, a Shaker style or a minimalist modern one is useful too. Think about whether you want to cook and dine in the same space, whether you’ll need a family space, a place for the dog to sleep or whether you want your washing machine and dishwasher in a utility room, on display, or concealed behind cabinetry. Are you a keen cook with dozens of gadgets, in need of a serious coffee machine or just somewhere to reheat a takeaway? A good designer will want to find out about your lifestyle before asking about colours or which display kitchen you preferred. After all, you’ll only replace your kitchen once every ten or twenty years, so the space needs to work well.  

We’re seeing a shift towards people wanting to get more out of our spaces. The kitchen is the social centre of the house and a lot of people spend more time at home now, compared to before the pandemic and with the rise of working from home. Where possible, walls are being removed which separated spaces and creating kitchen, living-dining areas that gives a massive boost to quality of life and can be totally transformational. As a local independent company, we know of specialists that can help with these larger projects where a kitchen is just part of the work.  We can put you in touch with the people you need and help source materials too.

Sometimes you can save money by shopping around and project managing different tradespeople and suppliers – though this can also be stressful. At Drumoak Kitchens, we manufacture bespoke kitchens in our own workshops and have our own fitters. We’ll even come and, say, replace a hinge on a kitchen that was bought twenty five years ago, so the aftersales package is something that should also be considered. 

Most people find that their ideas about design and layout changes during the design phase. It may be constraints of space or budget. A good designer will come up with solutions that work for your lifestyle, design aspirations and budget. It’s your kitchen, so you should feel fully engaged in the design process.  

As well as our bespoke kitchens, our German partners Hacker, alongside the British kitchen firms Marpatt, Landau, Burbidge and Second Nature, enable us to provide an extensive range of furniture designs to suit all tastes. Nowadays there’s a huge range of appliances, worktop materials like Corian, Caesarstone, Silestone, natural granites, solid timbers and modern laminates, as well as a vast selection of colours and finishing touches like handles and taps, so it’s easy to get bogged down. Working with a designer who takes the time to understand your lifestyle makes it so much simpler to create your dream kitchen.