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If you’re planning on renovating your kitchen, the idea probably fills you with a sense of trepidation. Sure, you’d love a new kitchen with all the modern conveniences, but you know that after five years – perhaps ten at the most – it’ll look dated, and you’ll have to start again.
That wouldn’t be so bad, but when you consider that the average kitchen renovation costs more than $23,000, you soon conclude that having an up-to-date kitchen is a costly thing indeed.
Okay, so what’s the solution? Glad you asked. The answer is to do the seemingly impossible: create a kitchen that will never look its age. How can you do that? Very easily, as it turns out. It’s all about choosing a design language that is just as at home in the 1960s as it is in the 2030s. Let’s take a look.
Make The Interior Scheme Cohesive
Creating a kitchen which never looks dated relies on complementing the interior design scheme in the rest of your home. You want to develop a sense of continuity when moving from one room to the next; they should all feel connected in some way.
Pulling that off can be something of a challenge, but it is possible with a little thought. The purpose of doing this is to get rid of juxtaposition – something which can cause your rooms to look dated by making them easy to compare to each other. You update your living room in one style, and then all of a sudden, your kitchen looks like it’s also in need of a makeover – that’s not what you want.
If you live in an older home, then it’s a good idea to use period features, like Bocchi farmhouse sinks. Newer homes are better suited to something that doesn’t rely on classic design cues but instead creating a sense of flow and using modern materials to add substance.
Simplify Where Possible
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Kitchens should be cluttered places. Ideally, you should have enough cupboard space for all of your utensils and appliances, without them having to spill out onto worktops. Anything you do have on your worktop should be there for aesthetic reasons. Fruit bowls, interior plants, and jars of nuts, dried fruit, and olives all work well.
Where possible, keep the colors neutral. Cream islands, neutral tiles, and raw wood beams will never go out of fashion.
Where possible, use cup handles on cupboards and drawers. Unlike regular handles, cup handles are associated with any particular period.
Darker exotic hardwoods are popular right now. However, these may look dated in years to come. You want to use lighter materials, like oak and beech, for that classic and timeless appeal. Do not use pine.
Choose White “White Goods”
What are white goods? They’re freezers, refrigerators, dishwashers, and washing machines: helpful devices that make modern life what it is today.
In recent years, white goods have come down in price and proliferated. The problem, however, with lower-spec items, is that they have an uncanny ability to age, seemingly faster than anything else in your home. Just take a look at a budget 1980s fridge-freezer, and you’ll soon get the point. It’s like looking at a sports car from the 1980s: it does the job, but it seems laughably blocky and ridiculous compared to modern alternatives.
So what’s the solution? The best route to go down is to choose a modern freezer designed in a classic style. Many companies, like Smeg, make brand new refrigerators to current spec but use a timeless aesthetic to help them retain their stylishness over the long-term. Importantly, Smeg makes many of the refrigerators in its classics range neutral or white. Choose a neutral color where possible.
Scrap Wall Units
Wall units are ubiquitous in most modern kitchens. But unfortunately, they have an annoying habit of aging the rooms they inhabit. Wall unit styling changes from decade to decade. In the 2000s, pine was all the rage. Now it’s neutral. Tomorrow, it could be something else.
You can get around this problem though by finding other ways to store all your kitchen utensils. You can use wine racks built into the brickwork to store your wine or open shelving next to the sink or oven to store all your pots, pans and crockery. Central kitchen islands are ideal for hiding away your coffee machine or blender.
Getting rid of wall units isn’t easy. But it’s a great way to open up space in your kitchen and give you more flexibility with what you do with it.
