All too often, kitchen companies attract customers with beautiful pictures in glossy magazines or expensive showrooms. Having sold one of their designs, they simply deliver and install the chosen cabinets and appliances in the space available, tweaking bits here and there for it all to fit.
The problem with this method is that the kitchen then looks like it was "planted" there, with little regard to the house around it. With the growing popularity of all-in-one kitchen/family rooms, custom-made kitchens can be the solution. Here are some of the ways to integrate the kitchen into the house.
- Use the full height of the room
- Glass-sided cabinets
- Put light in the cabinets
- Match the house period's style — the mouldings, hand painting
- Side-of-cabinet display shelves
Use the full height of the room
By extending the cabinets all the way to the ceiling, they seem to have grown out of the walls and belong to the building. The key is the seamless connection to the ceiling, using the same mouldings as in the rest of the room. Lighten them with glass doors and internal lights; with a high ceiling the effect can be very dramatic. The upper section may not be easily accessible, but that is where you display decorative or seldom-used items — a lit feature that gathers less dust.
Allow the light through
Kitchen cabinets can feel heavy, especially when wide or tall, so it is important to lighten them visually. One way is to replace the usually plain sides with glass: daylight shines through, and internal lighting shines out at night. Lightening cabinets — visually and literally — can transform a kitchen's appearance.
Design match
Make sure your kitchen matches the style of the rest of the house. Door panels should echo the other doors in the room in style and proportion; the mouldings should copy those on the windows; counter tops and colours should integrate visually; any wood should reflect other furniture in the room; and cabinets should be hand-painted, like the rest of the carpentry, for an authentic period feel.
Personalise it to integrate it
The side of a fridge is not the most attractive element in a décor — but with some imagination you can make it disappear. A mirror, a work of art, bookshelves or, here, shelves to display a collection of demi-tasses: suddenly it no longer looks like the side of a fridge, and the eye is drawn to something pleasant instead.