Planning a Flexible Kitchen

As kitchens become the hub of the household, with living room and dining room combined, cooking is increasingly evolving into a shared activity, with the whole family participating to make mealtimes a much more sociable event. The design team at Cotteswood has recently reported heightened demand for kitchen layouts with workstations for more than one person to cook, and says it is rare that kitchens today are designed with a lone chef in mind. ‘Many years ago, kitchens were considered to be primarily the woman’s domain where she prepared and cooked meals on her own. Nowadays everyone tends to get involved, and the kitchen has become multifunctional. It’s where the family gathers in the evenings, after work, to do homework, eat meals and entertain friends,’ explains Glyn Rodney, managing director of Cotteswood. Period homes, filled with character and charm, are naturally suited to such welcoming, sociable spaces, not least because the idea of 'living' in the kitchen, with its warming range cooker, was often a necessity before central heating.

Today’s multifunctional kitchens aren’t simply about cooking and eating. Many households now use the kitchen as their main office space too, not just for paying the household bills, but also for working from home and assisting with the children’s homework. Allocating a dedicated desk area is a wise move if you want to keep paperwork and computers away from food spillages, and built-in workstations can also be very attractive, especially if designed to coordinate with the main kitchen cabinets.

With all this activity going on in the kitchen, it’s no wonder we’re looking for somewhere to store away noisy and often unsightly laundry appliances. Indeed, the one exception to our new open-plan lives is the utility room, which is coming back into vogue with a vengeance. Providing an incredibly useful space to hide your less attractive household items, like that scruffy but relentlessly reliable food processor or the handy mop and bucket, a well-planned utility room is an essential extension of today’s multifunctional kitchen – it is its back-up support in many respects.

Just as multitasking is very much a part of modern life, when planning a new kitchen for your home it’s more important than ever to ensure that every activity is catered for. Whether you want to cook for a dinner party with your friends in the kitchen so you can talk as you prepare, or reply to emails at the breakfast bar, the multifunctional kitchen is designed to make multitasking much easier. Tackle each area in turn to ensure your new kitchen works just as hard as you do.

Creating Zones
In today’s busy homes there’s no such thing as ‘too many cooks’. By dividing your kitchen into areas for various uses, mealtimes will be a pleasure and not a chore.

According to Chris Sanderson, co-founder of trend prediction specialists The Future Laboratory, the next decade is going to see a greater emphasis on fresh food, with people returning to traditional cooking techniques that eschew ready-meals and cookery cheats. Cooking using fresh ingredients is expected to become the norm once again by 2020. ‘With the cost of living rising, we will start to appreciate the quality of our food and work harder to make meals stretch, resulting in more time spent in the kitchen,’ says Chris.

In this situation, it would certainly pay to organise your layout and space so that two people cooking at once don’t clash. Alexandra Ross Skinner, design director at Smallbone of Devizes, recommends installing two sinks, preferably in different areas of the kitchen, supply. ‘For families and couples who enjoy cooking together, a large amount of prepping space is also important, particularly if you tend to cook different courses simultaneously. For example, someone might be prepping vegetables in one area, while another rolls out pastry for pudding nearby – both tasks that require plenty of room,’ she adds.

Encouraging children to become more involved in creating family meals from an early age is a great way to ensure a future generation of keen, competent cooks. Try to choose appliances with safety features, such as cool-touch oven doors and lockable hobs, and include a lower-level surface – a simple kitchen table will do – which is easier for younger children to reach and ideal for making cakes and biscuits. ‘Avoid positioning a child’s cooking area between the cooking and pan- so that chefs aren’t vying for the water draining spaces as this is obviously hazardous. And, of course, as children don’t remain so for long, it wouldn’t be sensible to dedicate the whole space to them,’ recommends designer Alison Moore, from Moore & Bradfield.

If space is at a premium consider buying a portable butcher’s block, perhaps located in an adjacent room, which can be wheeled in to provide extra preparation space when required. A peninsula or island unit is also ideal for multiple-use since cooks can face each other as they work, enhancing the social enjoyment of cooking en masse.

Multifunctional Kitchens
Stuart McKay, senior designer at VelaCici, shares his expert advice.

• ‘The primary aim should be to avoid congestion in any one area, so it’s important to split the kitchen into definite zones. Consider space and facilities for relaxing and entertaining, and locate any office area in a quieter part of the room.
• ‘Bear in mind that all appliances need to be quiet, efficient and odour-free wherever possible.
• ‘The design of a kitchen in a multi-purpose environment needs to consider the user as an entertainer and not relegated to a corner. Therefore, island units need careful consideration so that they don’t isolate any particular function.
• ‘When designing an office area within a kitchen, an independent area is required away from water and cooking zones. The advent of wireless computer technology means it is not necessary to have servers and printers in the kitchen.
• ‘The utility room should ideally accommodate tumble dryers, ironing boards and cleaning equipment as well as the washing machine. The creation of a lobby area linking the outside door, kitchen door and utility can help ease congestion.‘

Laundry and Storage
Make space for a well-planned utility room that helps keep your kitchen clutter free.

There’s no place for laundry in today’s open-plan kitchens – nobody wants a washing machine on a spin cycle interrupting their conversation. Thus, kitchen designers are once again being asked to create space for a separate utility or laundry room, by using an area of the existing kitchen or revamping a tired lean-to or boot room. In recent months, Nick Anderson, director of Guild Anderson, has noticed a rise in requests for matching utility rooms, featuring furniture that coordinates with the main kitchen, albeit in a simpler design. ‘A utility adjacent to the kitchen helps me get the most out of the kitchen space by easing the pressure to incorporate large appliances and vast storage within the kitchen itself. Laundry appliances, extra refrigeration and wine coolers are well placed in a utility, together with larders for bulk buy items of food, and extra crockery storage,’ says Nick.

Of course period homes are much more likely to have a separate utility room already in existence but they’re not always the most welcoming of spaces. Cold, badly lit and poorly ventilated, most utility rooms are kept behind closed doors for a very good reason. Proper insulation of the walls and floors will vastly improve the atmosphere, as will introducing an effective heating system, such as electric underfloor heating, which is now relatively inexpensive to both install and run. Warmup says it costs just 1.5p per hour to heat a 2m sq utility room using electric underfloor heating, and most systems can be set on a timer so that heat isn’t wasted overnight.

Clearly you shouldn’t spend the same amount of money on utility room cabinets as you do in the main kitchen, but it pays to install fitted furniture with fully integrated laundry appliances if you want a sleek and clutter-free look. Many companies will offer a preferential rate for the utility space if it is ordered at the same time as your kitchen. There are no firm rules about the design of utility rooms but a Belfast sink is great for flower arranging and washing your hands when you come in from the garden, and a tall broom cupboard is ideal for storing mops, brushes and the vacuum cleaner. If installing a tumble dryer, try to opt for an externally vented model to minimise humidity in the room. It’s now possible to buy A-rated tumble dryers (try John Lewis), while White Knight’s gas-powered tumble dryers can cut your running costs by almost a third. Finishes should ideally be extra durable and easy to clean – granite worktops and flagstone floors look appropriate in a period setting, and traditional touches like a classic wooden clothes dryer (from £35.99 at Pulley Maid) will complete the look.

Office Space
Every smooth-running kitchen deserves a dedicated office area.

Whether you’re looking for a safe place to store paperwork, or a permanent desk area to work from home, making space for officestyle facilities in the kitchen is increasingly popular. ‘We’re often asked for an area where people can deal with emails and household details, and children can have space for homework away from the dining table,’ says designer Alison Moore, of Moore & Bradfield.

Corners are notoriously difficult to access as kitchen cupboards (often involving a convoluted carousel arrangement) but make a great position for a desk, providing a generous workspace in a relatively small area. If you are likely to be sat at the desk for hours at a time, a view is essential, either looking out into the room or located beneath a window. It’s important to keep paperwork and computer equipment away from food, so try to incorporate some form of closed storage such as drawers, perhaps with file dividers, or neat cubby holes that will keep pens and other office paraphernalia at bay. Kitchen designer Johnny Grey recommends installing a desk with a roller shutter top. ‘Then you can hide all those un-filed pieces of paper away when guests come for dinner,’ he explains.

Advances in wireless technology have made office spaces much more flexible and free-spirited, with many people happy to sit at their breakfast bar with a laptop and cup of coffee. However, don’t forget that laptops and mobile phones require an electricity supply at some point so allocate sockets nearby for this purpose. ‘You might consider a pull-out drawer underneath your island with an electrical socket built-in, which can be used to store your laptop and papers when not in use,’ adds interior designer Anita Kohn at Living in Space. Finally, don’t forget to ensure there is directional lighting in the ceiling above your work area – or a simple anglepoise lamp will often suffice.

FEATURE LINDA CLAYTON
Featured in the March 2010 issue of Period Living