Kitchen and Bath Design Tips – Four Ideas to Get You Started

Kitchen and Bath Design | Kitchen and Bath Remodel

Kitchen and bath remodel projects can be very rewarding and are typically at the top of most homeowner’s project list. Plus, kitchen and bath design has evolved and come a long way in the last several decades. The kitchen has undergone a transformation over the past several decades from being simply a room where meals were prepared to being the main nerve center of the house. The kitchen is now a room where your family may gather at the end of the day, guests can be entertained, and might even feature an open design that flows into your home’s primary living space.

Bathrooms are no longer just a room for taking a shower or brushing your teeth. The bath has become a relaxing oasis where you can recover from a stressful world. Today’s bathrooms are about pampering your family in ways that homeowners just 50 years ago couldn’t begin to imagine.

Perhaps another reason why a kitchen and bath remodel project is so popular is that you can recoup so much of the associated costs when your home is sold. Remodeling Magazine reports in their 2011-12 Cost vs. Value survey that on average homeowners can expect to get back about 62 percent of their costs on a mid-range bath remodel and as much as 65 percent for a kitchen remodel on the same scale. This is a national average and the return on investment percentages may be higher or lower in your region.

However, whether you remodel for your family’s enjoyment or to add value to your home, developing a plan for your kitchen and bath remodel are instrumental in ensuring a successful project.

Kitchen and Bath Design Tip #1: Keep Function in Mind

Choosing the right fixtures, floor coverings, and paint colors are all important parts of kitchen and bath design. The most critical factor for a pleasing outcome may be putting some thought into the overall design of the rooms. A beautiful room that doesn’t function properly, or suit your family’s lifestyle, can be disappointing. Or perhaps even worse, a waste of your hard earned money if your kitchen and bath remodel is not properly planned.

Kitchen and Bath Design Tip #2: Remember the Triangle Rule

The possibilities are endless when remodeling. It seems like new kitchen cabinets, appliances, and plumbing options are being introduced by manufacturers every year. However, there’s one primary rule of kitchen design that has been used for many years and it still holds true today: the placement of the refrigerator, primary sink, and range should form what’s called a “kitchen work triangle”. Your kitchen work triangle should be a total length of between 12 and 26 feet and each leg should be between 4 and 9 feet.

Foot traffic should not flow through the kitchen work triangle if at all possible. This design permits meals to be prepared efficiently and reduces a lot of needless movement in the workspace.

Kitchen and Bath Design Tip #3: Don’t Close Yourself Off

Your kitchen remodel should also consider conversation. If you enjoy a little conversation, and perhaps even some help when preparing meals, consider opening up the space to the rest of the home as part of your kitchen remodel project. It can often be done by removing a wall section and using base cabinets with finished rear panels as the space divider. If the wall in question is structural, any support column that may be required can normally be incorporated into the base cabinet design. Add a framed knee wall at the rear of the base cabinets that stands a little higher along with a small countertop to form a breakfast bar or ledge to stage platters when entertaining guests.

Kitchen and Bath Design Tip #4: How About Privacy?

A bath remodel could be ideal for getting more functionality or privacy out of your master bathroom. For example, a master bath can be a busy place on a weekday morning – especially if you and your significant other have to be ready at about the same time. The whole ordeal can be made much more pleasant by creating a closed-off toilet area in a corner of the room. Plumbing codes dictate how much open space is required around the toilet, but in most cases the enclosure shouldn’t deduct too many square feet from the overall room. Don’t forget to provide the enclosure with its own light source and an exhaust fan might be a good idea as well.

Kitchen and Bath Design Tip #5: Sharing Has Its Limitations

Sharing is an important aspect of any successful relationship, but your good nature can often be put to the ultimate test when it comes to your master bath sink. If you’re tired of constantly trying to find an empty space on the vanity top or room in the medicine cabinet, in all likelihood your significant other may be feeling the same way.

Put an end to the dilemma once and for all by incorporating a double bowl vanity with two medicine cabinets into your bath remodel. A minimum of 60 inches of wall space is all that’s needed to make it work, but 72 inches can allow each of you to really stretch out. If you have enough room, installing a vanity drawer base between two sink bases can provide additional storage – just be sure to claim at least one drawer for yourself.