The Designers at System Six Kitchen have many years experience between them. They have designed many bespoke family kitchens. Most of the kitchens that leave the System Six factory are destine to serve families of all sizes and situations. It is important to get the design right to ensure that the functionality of the kitchen suits your family’s needs. So we have put together this blog to highlight some of the key features to consider when planning your family kitchen.
Planning
When planning your layout, you must consider how your family uses the current kitchen and compare this to how you would like to use the new kitchen space. For example, look at aspects such as whether you currently have a separate dining area. Consider whether you like to include a dining space in your new kitchen or keep it as just as a cooking area. Another huge factor of a family kitchen to consider is storage. In our experience, no kitchen can have enough storage. Please read our previous blogs on storage items for Corner Units, and Larder Units.
A family kitchen has to be adaptable, during the day it needs to be a functional, safe kitchen, and during the evenings it needs to work as an ambient space for adults to enjoy. This can be achieved by using a variety of lighting techniques to change the mood of the kitchen.
The final planning point to consider is as your family grows and matures, how the kitchen is used will change. It is important to think about not only how your family will use the kitchen today, but also how they will be using it in 5 or 10 years time and beyond. Every family is different and so are their kitchens.
Worktops
The Worktop in your kitchen has to be suitable for your style of living. A family kitchen will see users of all ages, so considering the heights of worktops and how little chef’s will access the tops is another factor. Cooking is always a great family activity, one option would be to include a set of steps, another is to create a low level worktop for them to use.
Safety in the Kitchen
The appliances supplied by System Six Kitchens will come with a host of safety features to keep you and your family protected. These safety features include child tamper proof controls on appliances, and auto safety switch off on the gas hobs. The tamper proof controls ensure little fingers don’t press buttons that they shouldn’t, such as pressing the defrost button on your freezer, or turning off your dishwasher during a cycle. The auto safety switch on the gas hob is very important in any household. If the gas hob detects the flame as gone out, it will automatically turn off the gas. Other features that are perfect for any family kitchen are quiet appliances. Most of the dishwashers and appliances supplied by System Six are near silent, which is perfect for open plan living, ensuring that the noises from your appliances are not disturbing your kitchen living. Another feature to help parents is anti-finger print coating on most of the stainless steel appliances supplied, ensuring little hands won’t leave their marks on your appliances and if they do, it’s easily wiped clean. We are seeing a trend for Boiling-Water Taps being installed in family kitchens. These taps are making the traditional kettle redundant, giving users more worktop space and eliminating the risk of little hands pulling a hot kettle on themselves. The Boiling–Water Taps all have built in safety features to ensure that the younger users of your kitchen can not accidentally turn the boiling water on. Many of our customers worry about the electric bill that these amazing gadgets could run up, but the Quooker Boiling-Water Taps cost just 3p a day to run, so annually that is just £10.95! Bargain! Many of the family kitchens we install and supply contain induction hobs. Induction hobs work by creating an electromagnetic field using your pans to heat the food, so there is no naked flame and all induction hobs can be locked to ensure that little hands cannot accidentally turn them on. Another safety feature to note, is if little hands do manage to work out how to bypass the child lock and turn on the hob, they will not work or heat up if there is not a pan on the hob. Read our blog all about induction hobs. Another great accidental safety feature is the handleless kitchen. No handles eliminates the risk of little heads bumping the kitchen handles. System Six Kitchens has a huge range of handleless kitchens in a vast array of colours to suit any modern, family kitchen.
Our designers have extensive knowledge and experience of designing a kitchen to suit any family so use the 'Get in Touch' button below to arrange a free, no obligation home survey or just pop by our showroom on Christow Road, on the Marsh Barton Industrial Estate for a cuppa and a chat. Let us take the stress of designing your dream kitchen!