“First of all, you need to answer the ques­tion: “Why do you need a kitchen?”. Per­haps you are a per­son who choos­es cof­fee and toast for break­fast, does not dine at home, and in the evening after work has din­ner at a cafe near work. In this case, you do not need a large kitchen with spa­cious stor­age sys­tems. It is enough to have a 2‑burner hob, a small refrig­er­a­tor, a ket­tle or a cof­fee machine.

Per­haps you are a house­wife. You have a big fam­i­ly and you cook a lot. Then, to imple­ment all your needs, you will need a large num­ber of appli­ances, stor­age sys­tems, a refrig­er­a­tor with a large freez­er, and a com­fort­able wear-resis­tant work sur­face.

Or maybe you, fol­low­ing mod­ern trends, are an adher­ent of “ready” food deliv­ery ser­vices or use the “sports nutri­tion rations” ser­vice that sup­plies you with food for sev­er­al days. The main func­tion of the kitchen here is the heat­ing of food. In this case, you need a good roomy fridge and microwave.”

Anna Moska­to­va, inte­ri­or design­er:

“Don’t give up on a vari­ety of light­ing. With the help of light, you can cre­ate dif­fer­ent moods in the same room. For exam­ple, place a small pen­dant light direct­ly above the din­ing table. Its soft and warm light will cre­ate cozi­ness dur­ing fam­i­ly din­ners in the evenings.

Be sure to add LED light­ing above the coun­ter­top. First, cook­ing is much more com­fort­able on a well-lit sur­face. Sec­ond­ly, if you turn off the rest of the light, such a back­light will cre­ate a dec­o­ra­tive effect. It will look beau­ti­ful both at a roman­tic can­dlelit evening and with friend­ly gath­er­ings in the kitchen.
If you like to have a lot of light in the room at any time of the day, add a row of spot­lights along the kitchen unit and along the walls.

“Based on your lifestyle, decide what you can def­i­nite­ly give up. Why do you need extra appli­ances or a stor­age sys­tem in the form of hang­ing cab­i­nets. Mod­ern design is inex­orably mov­ing towards min­i­mal­ism. There­fore, act on the basis of your real needs and tasks.

What to do if you decide not to hire an inte­ri­or design­er? The scheme is as sim­ple as pos­si­ble: make your­self mea­sure the room with a tape mea­sure. It is impor­tant to indi­cate the exist­ing water and elec­tri­cal out­lets and indi­cate the heights of their loca­tion on the plan. Search the Inter­net for kitchen options that best reflect your wish­es. Con­tact the man­ag­er in a spe­cial­ized kitchen fur­ni­ture show­room, or vis­it the Kitchen depart­ment in a build­ing hyper­mar­ket. There you can get acquaint­ed with the choice of mate­ri­als, con­tact a spe­cial­ist who will col­lect the most suit­able option for you and cal­cu­late its cost.

The most expen­sive part of the kitchen set is the facades. Accord­ing­ly, the small­er the area of ​​the facades in the kitchen, the low­er the cost. Anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant con­sum­able is work sur­face mate­ri­als and an apron. Their choice is very large, as well as the range of prices. If you do not want to spend extra mon­ey on the kitchen, think about opti­miz­ing this par­tic­u­lar posi­tion.

Draw­ers, closers, ele­va­tor mech­a­nisms will also lead to an increase in the bill. Con­ve­nience or the need to fit into the bud­get — the choice is yours. The tech­nol­o­gy mar­ket is also over­sat­u­rat­ed with a pro­pos­al for every taste and bud­get. I advise you to choose the mid­dle price seg­ment in order to get away from the sur­pris­es that you may encounter when choos­ing cheap equip­ment.

Anna Moska­to­va, inte­ri­or design­er:

“It is worth focus­ing on qual­i­ty mate­ri­als for kitchen fronts. There are many fac­tors in the kitchen that can quick­ly turn a new, beau­ti­ful kitchen into an untidy and shab­by one.

Mois­ture con­stant­ly accu­mu­lates in the sink area. Steam is released dur­ing cook­ing. Hot air comes out from the stove and oven. So that this impact does not affect kitchen fur­ni­ture, you need to choose trust­ed man­u­fac­tur­ers based on the feed­back and expe­ri­ence of friends. The most bud­getary facade mate­r­i­al is chip­board lam­i­nat­ed with film. But even such mate­r­i­al can last for many years if the choice of the man­u­fac­tur­er is made cor­rect­ly.

The same goes for kitchen coun­ter­tops. You should not save and take thin coun­ter­tops, which will quick­ly swell from mois­ture and become chipped. It is bet­ter to take a mois­ture-resis­tant durable coun­ter­top made of 38 mm chip­board, which will retain its orig­i­nal appear­ance for a long time.

“If you bought a “sec­ondary” build­ing with a four-meter kitchen, but dream of a spa­cious kitchen-liv­ing room, you won’t do with­out sig­nif­i­cant alter­ations. It is impor­tant to con­tact qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als in order to get a good result. Yes, there will be a lot of redo­ing, and in addi­tion to cos­met­ic repairs, a rede­vel­op­ment approval project will be required. But isn’t the dream worth the effort?

As for the rest of the cas­es, then trans­fer­ring the water out­lets and bring­ing out the sock­ets in suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties will be inex­pen­sive. It is impor­tant to think through all the details of the project well before start­ing repair work. And then the spent forces, mon­ey and time will be jus­ti­fied. You will sure­ly be pleased with the result.”

Anna Moska­to­va, inte­ri­or design­er:

“Of course, you can get by with cos­met­ic mea­sures. For exam­ple, change indi­vid­ual ele­ments: replace the tiles on the apron, instead of out­dat­ed cur­tains with pat­terns, hang more mod­ern plain ones. Even if you change the fur­ni­ture han­dles to more ele­gant ones, you can sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the over­all look of the kitchen — the style lies in the details.

Recent­ly, in one inte­ri­or pub­lic, I saw a great exam­ple of this approach: an old kitchen with red­dish-brown wood-like facades and green shab­by walls from Sovi­et times was trans­formed beyond recog­ni­tion. The walls were paint­ed light gray, and the green tiles were replaced with gray-white mar­ble tex­tured pan­els. At the same time, the kitchen facades, which seemed out­dat­ed, seem to have also changed: on a neu­tral light gray back­ground, they began to look more con­trast­ing and noble.