Why Have an Actual Designer Help With Your New Kitchen Plans?

When planning a new kitchen for your home, it's good to work with an actual designer, rather than just replacing cabinets, appliances and surfaces on your own, without any type of professional assistance. Note a few reasons why it's good to at least consult with a designer for your new kitchen, and how their services can benefit you.

Durability of surfaces

Kitchen surfaces need to be especially durable, as they will be exposed to hot pans, food spills, high humidity levels and other such risks. At the same time, you want your kitchen benchtops and flooring to be very attractive and to coordinate with cabinets and your appliances. A kitchen designer can help you find the right materials for these surfaces, avoiding stone or tiles that might look very nice, but which won't hold up well to heavy foot traffic, water spills and the like.

A kitchen designer can also alert you to the maintenance needed for each type of material, such as the sealing required for stone pieces, versus steam cleaning needed for a laminate benchtop. This will ensure you choose surface materials that you can easily maintain and keep looking their best for many years to come.

Access

When adding new appliances or cabinets to a kitchen, you may not consider how all their doors and drawers will work next to each other; as an example, a new refrigerator that is even a few inches or centimetres deeper than your current refrigerator might actually block a drawer next to it, so that you can't access that drawer. Changing the direction of how cabinet doors open can also mean having them bump into appliances or other features of the kitchen. A kitchen designer can take actual measurements of the entire kitchen and ensure that you choose new appliances and other items that still allow you full use of drawers and doors.

Features

You may assume you know all the features that you want in a kitchen, but a designer may know of certain changes to your kitchen, or items to add, that might make food prep and storage much easier for you. For example, a designer might suggest adding electrical outlets so that you can more easily use several countertop appliances at one time. An overhead pot rack might be needed in a small kitchen, if there isn't enough room in a cabinet for all your pots and pans. Using their expertise in this way can mean ending up with a kitchen you love and that works for your needs in particular.