Do You Have a Case of a Small Kitchen?
Small, cramped kitchens are not uncommon if you have an older house or an apartment. What matters is how you intend on changing it, and with all of the different storage options in today’s market along with excellent design your kitchen can go from closet sized to being able to give you more than a little elbow room. Here are a few pointer’s below that can help you through your dilemma…
Pull-Out Pantry Cabinets:
Pull-Out Pantry Cabinets can be very useful in a small space, for instance if you don’t have the square footage for a closet pantry itself. This option still provides you with storage space for your food, just in a smaller and more compact option.
Refrigerator Cabinets:
Refrigerator cabinets are key in a small space! If you need every square foot of your kitchen for storage and the refrigerator is standing lone-star, think about installing a condensed 12-15 inch tall cabinet over it. This will give you more space to put all of the everyday kitchen items, and in addition give the overall asthetic of the room a more finished look. Another opportunity to take a hold of more space is over the kitchen window, this is essentially the same concept as the refrigerator cabinet.
Remove Space Hogging Soffits:
Now soffits are not always bad, they can add a lot of architectural interest and fill space in rooms that otherwise would be un-used; but in this scenario if your kitchen is incredibly small the removal of the soffit could be a good thing. Of course never remove a soffit that is needed for electrical or other mechanical housing, but if it happens to be for asthetic purposes this space could be used to heighten your upper cabinets. As seen in the photo above this person could’ve really used the extra space to not only make the kitchen appear taller, but to increase the storage space in their uppers.
Cabinet Finishes:
Mixing up the cabinet finishes in the kitchen is a good thing, it not only makes the room feel less matchy-matchy, but it can aesthetically make the kitchen feel more spacious. For example, in the photo above this person decided they wanted the base cabinets completely solid, and the wall cabinets in an almost translucent frosted glass. This does in turn give the kitchen an airier feel, and lucky for most of us it still hides our mess behind the pretty frosted glass. That is one option for a few braver souls, another option instead of having a glass upper cabinet door is going with a lighter wood finish. Any small room can start feeling like a cave if there are too many dark finishes, and the cabinetry consumes the kitchen so this is your chance to open it up.
Backsplash Options:
The last tip on how to make your kitchen appear bigger is to use long horizontal backsplash tiles; this technique visually stretches the room wider just like a vertical tile would do to heighten the appearance of a room. With the added glossy-like appearance of tile this will have then same effect on the eye as the gorgeous frosted glass cabinet doors.
