Your kitchen is one of the most important parts of your house: it’s where you start your mornings, it’s where your kids do their homework, and it’s where you come together with family and friends. This means when it’s time to remodel your kitchen, it can feel overwhelming. You want to balance aesthetics with functionality, and you need your kitchen to fit in with the rest of your home. To simplify your decisions, here are three main focus points to narrow down your kitchen remodel.
1. Defining A Style
Finding your style is the most difficult and essential part of your kitchen remodel. The style will help you determine all other elements of your kitchen: what type of cabinets to get, what lines and accessories you want to build in. For inspiration, you can look at Pinterest, some of our own kitchen remodels, or your friends’ kitchens! But a good starting point is to decide between a modern, traditional, or transitional look:
A Modern Kitchen: Is usually very simplistic, has clean lines, frameless cabinets, slab drawer fronts, and relies on the accessories in the kitchen to define the style.
A Traditional Kitchen: Is usually more decorative, has neutral color pallets, antique style cabinets, and luxury countertops.
A Transitional Kitchen: Can vary depending on how you mix in elements of both modern and traditional kitchens. For example, you can have frameless cabinets which add to the modern look, but use traditional accessories to keep it transitional.
Quick Tip – An investment we suggest is hiring a kitchen designer! You can talk to them about different kitchen themes, your needs, and find the kitchen that meets your style.
2. Functionality
Defining your kitchen functionality is key to determining which type of hardware and cabinets you should invest in. Do you have kids? Dogs? Is the kitchen a place you want your family to hang out in? All these questions will help you figure out what kind of kitchen design is best for you.
Quick Tip – If you’re a family with a lot of moving parts, durability should be a key factor when you’re searching for hardware. Use your budget to invest in cabinets that have strong mechanics and a long warranty. You won’t want to be replacing cabinets two years after your kitchen remodel!
3. Custom Vs. Stock Cabinets
Here, we come to the debate of custom versus stock cabinets. Budget, functionality, and style will all help you determine whether you go custom or stock. Stock cabinets are cheap, quick to install, but have limited options. Custom cabinets are made to fit your needs perfectly, but can take longer to install, and are more expensive.
Quick Tip – If your budget only works with stock but there are some places that would benefit from custom cabinets, consider looking at a cabinet line that offers both stock and custom! That way, you can keep the majority of your kitchen within budget using stock cabinets and have select custom cabinets!
We hope that by helping you focus on these three decisions, you can more easily decide how you want to remodel your kitchen. If you’re still nervous about the process, or want help hiring a kitchen designer and getting started on your remodel, reach out to us here! We are happy to walk you through your kitchen remodel!