Studio kitchen interior

They com­bine the kitchen with the liv­ing room not only in small stu­dio apart­ments, where par­ti­tions are not pro­vid­ed ini­tial­ly, but also in spa­cious apart­ments of the old fund, and even in Khrushchev. In any case, the inte­ri­or of the kitchen of the stu­dio requires care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, because now both the own­ers and guests will see the kitchen cor­ner much more often.

Design features of the living room kitchen

Com­bin­ing a kitchen area with a seat­ing area is a solu­tion that has both advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. More space, it’s more con­ve­nient to go to the refrig­er­a­tor, you can get by with one TV, but at the same time, dirty dish­es will always be in sight, and the smells of cook­ing food will per­me­ate all the fur­ni­ture in your liv­ing room. The small­er the space, the more dif­fi­cult it is to choose fur­ni­ture, this is impor­tant to con­sid­er when design­ing the inte­ri­or of the stu­dio: the kitchen and liv­ing room will occu­py the space that could be use­ful for a work­ing or sleep­ing area.

When choos­ing a design solu­tion for a com­bined kitchen and liv­ing room, own­ers often opt for a loft style. The name “loft” comes from the word “attic” and orig­i­nal­ly referred to indus­tri­al premis­es — fac­to­ry floors, ware­hous­es — which were equipped for res­i­den­tial or enter­tain­ment space.

Loft inte­ri­ors are about three times cheap­er than tra­di­tion­al ones, and at the same time they have orig­i­nal­i­ty. Dis­tinc­tive fea­tures of this style are uncam­ou­flaged pipes, exposed brick walls.

A vari­ety of styles allows you to embody all the ideas in a spa­cious kitchen with high ceil­ings, but in a small kitchen it will be more appro­pri­ate, for exam­ple, the Scan­di­na­vian style with its white walls and min­i­mal­ism. The sim­pler the design in a small room, the more com­fort­able it is to be in it.

Advantages and disadvantages of a studio kitchen

The kitchen is often small and cramped. If you com­bine it with the liv­ing room, there will be more space, which will make the room brighter and more com­fort­able. This is espe­cial­ly use­ful for small apart­ments, where every cen­time­ter of space counts. Often the com­bined kitchen and liv­ing room are found in town­hous­es and duplex­es — coun­try hous­es for one or two fam­i­lies. If each fam­i­ly mem­ber has a per­son­al space, the kitchen-din­ing room is suit­able for a joint hol­i­day.

Dis­ad­van­tages:

1. Smells and sounds from the kitchen area.
2. The host­ess can be annoyed that every­one sees the cook­ing process.
3. Unaes­thet­ic appear­ance of dirty dish­es.

Studio kitchen zoning principles

When arrang­ing a kitchen-stu­dio, inte­ri­or design is impor­tant.

In the kitchen-stu­dio, you can also orga­nize a work­place, so it is impor­tant that the inte­ri­or is har­mo­nious and not annoy­ing.

The main func­tion­al areas are for cook­ing and eat­ing. You can also allo­cate space for relax­ation. The din­ing area should be placed as close to the win­dow as pos­si­ble. The dis­tance from the din­ing table to the wall or oth­er fur­ni­ture should be at least 1 m.

Separation by color

Most often, design­ers choose visu­al solu­tions — the cook­ing and recre­ation areas dif­fer in the col­or of the fur­ni­ture and wall­pa­per, some­times even the floor and ceil­ing. They may also dif­fer in tex­ture. The best col­or scheme for a small stu­dio kitchen is neu­tral tones and bright accents. If you have a light kitchen set with­out bright spots, they should be added to the seat­ing area, for exam­ple, in the form of pil­lows. If the kitchen set has a bright shade, it is bet­ter to choose dis­creet fur­ni­ture in the din­ing area.

Wall­pa­per for paint­ing will help you eas­i­ly divide the kitchen-stu­dio into zones, as well as change the col­or of the walls if you get tired of it. A light floor and walls visu­al­ly increase the space, so it is advis­able to light that part of the room that is small­er.

Separation with trim

Often dif­fer­ent floors are made in the kitchen area and in the din­ing room: it will be more prac­ti­cal to use tiles near the sink. And where they dine and relax, you can put linoleum, lam­i­nate or par­quet.

There is also an option to raise the floor lev­el in the kitchen area. How­ev­er, it is safer to change the ceil­ing lev­el by 10–15 cm, stretch ceil­ings allow you to hide com­mu­ni­ca­tion box­es and cable chan­nels run­ning along the ceil­ing so that they do not spoil the view of the room. If you low­er the ceil­ing lev­el above the kitchen set so that the cab­i­nets are flush with it, you won’t have to dust them, and the kitchen will visu­al­ly become more com­pact.

Light

Dif­fer­ent light sources in dif­fer­ent areas of the apart­ment are not only beau­ti­ful, but also con­ve­nient. Soft, sub­dued light in the din­ing area will help cre­ate a roman­tic atmos­phere, a sconce or floor lamp will be use­ful for read­ing lovers in the liv­ing room. Bright light direct­ed at the work sur­face in the kitchen will allow you to cook with great com­fort, so it is bet­ter not to skimp on coun­ter­top light­ing.

To empha­size the dif­fer­ence between the kitchen and din­ing areas, you can make high­lights at dif­fer­ent lev­els.

Screens and partitions

To fence off the kitchen area, you can use glass slid­ing doors that will not let in noise and smell. Trans­par­ent par­ti­tions make the kitchen brighter. And in stu­dio kitchens with a gas stove or col­umn, par­ti­tions or slid­ing doors are required by the stan­dards. When rede­vel­op­ment, you can leave part of the wall for zon­ing. When a pas­sage is pierced through a load-bear­ing wall, it is nec­es­sary to leave a part of it, which will take on the load. Such an arch between the kitchen and din­ing areas will per­fect­ly sep­a­rate them visu­al­ly.

Zoning with furniture

You can install a bar counter or a bar cab­i­net, an island table, a din­ing table, a book­case at the bor­der of the zones. When choos­ing fur­ni­ture for this pur­pose, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that it will attract the most atten­tion, which means it must fit into the over­all style of your kitchen, and mod­ern options like a bar counter will look strange in a coun­try or Provence style inte­ri­or.

A good solu­tion for zon­ing can be a sofa, which can also serve as a bed.

What set to choose for a studio apartment

For a small-sized econ­o­my-class stu­dio apart­ment or for a rebuilt Khrushchev, it is more con­ve­nient to make a kitchen set to order so that it meets both the needs of the own­ers and the dimen­sions of the kitchen. It is prac­ti­cal to have a lot of lock­ers so that there is no feel­ing of a clut­tered space. It is con­ve­nient when the cab­i­nets reach the ceil­ing. They do not accu­mu­late dust, allow you to max­i­mize the use of usable space. And the ceil­ing at the same time will seem high­er.

Of all the options for head­sets, it is more ratio­nal to choose a com­pact cor­ner one, so it will be more com­fort­able in the kitchen.

Appliances

Small house­hold appli­ances can be hid­den in high cab­i­nets, mak­ing them built-in, even a refrig­er­a­tor is masked in the same way. This increas­es the free space and makes the inte­ri­or sol­id.

In addi­tion, it is impor­tant to choose the most silent mod­els of equip­ment, the issue of sound insu­la­tion is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for a small kitchen-stu­dio.

It is also worth con­sid­er­ing that for a kitchen com­bined with a din­ing room and a liv­ing room, an extrac­tor hood is impor­tant, which must be of high qual­i­ty and pow­er­ful. With­out an exhaust hood, the fur­ni­ture will quick­ly become sat­u­rat­ed with the smells of cook­ing. Tex­tiles and fur­ni­ture uphol­stery will be cov­ered with a greasy coat­ing. To avoid this, you need to install a hood and do not for­get to turn it on dur­ing cook­ing. If the design of the kitchen-stu­dio is not com­bined with the hood, you should choose a com­pact built-in mod­el.

Table and chairs

The choice of fur­ni­ture depends on what you plan to do in the kitchen. If you rarely invite guests and pre­fer to dine out, there is no guar­an­tee that you will need a large table. And he needs a lot of space. With a lack of space, slid­ing, fold­ing, trans­form­ing tables and chairs can help.