Three Steps to a Perfect Family Kitchen

Everyone wants a perfect kitchen. It’s where your family gathers, where you might guide your kids through homework sessions and cooking lessons, enjoy celebrations and nourish your family and friends. Any family home needs to have a properly functioning, efficient, comfortable and beautiful kitchen in it.

Once you have a family, the kitchen is the heart of the home. Having a family kitchen is quite different from the kind of set up you would have had before your brood swelled. While designing it, therefore, you need to ensure your kitchen has three things: durability, the ability to withstand the intense energy of children and be easy to clean.


Durability

A kitchen isn’t a good one unless it can happily weather years and years of dedicated use. Your kitchen is going to take a sustained beating for a long time, so it has to be built to last. With this in mind, you’ll have to make a lot of decisions about the fittings and appliances based on how durable they are going to be over the next few years.

For example, don’t go for sprayed or hand-painted unit doors: they will inevitably be knocked and chipped. Likewise, your worktops are going to have to be solid and tough, in order to handle hot pans and the like being placed on top of them. You may find that the worktop you end up with may not be as pretty as you originally envisioned. This doesn’t matter: ultimately, durability is what you want.

Making your kitchen childproof

Making your kitchen durable for extended use is one thing: making it durable against children is another. Usually, you’ll have to employ a series of small touches in order to make it child-resistant and child-friendly.

· Childproof unit handles are essential. Kids usually tear around the house, no matter how much you warn them not to. As a result, they run the risk of getting their clothing caught on large unit handles, which can lead to nasty falls. Go for smaller handles to avoid accidents.

· Keep your detergents and cleaning products locked up. This is essential if you have kids in the house. When you’re designing the kitchen layout, make sure there are a couple of high cabinets installed. Likewise, glassware and china should be also stored in high places.

Brought to you in collaboration with Sainsbury's