Let's Talk... how to plan your kitchen

The busiest and most important room in house should be both beautiful and functional. It's also the most expensive to design, so let's go through the process to minimise both cost and mistakes.

Every month I host a live video session with Lisa Dawson which is free to watch for everyone. So far we have tackled lighting, buying vintage, and choosing art. For paid subscribers I later create a post highlighting the main points we have discussed, adding links and images and anything else I might have forgotten to say in the ramble of an unscripted conversation. This is also for those who prefer to read than watch. And of course it passes into the archive, where you can access it forever, along with everything else I have written over the years. In our most recent video we spoke about Kitchen planning.

So here, for paid subscribers is an orderly post dedicated to designing that most important of rooms.

Not to open with the bleedin’ obvious but kitchens are expensive which means you basically want to do it once and forget about it. In the last house we changed the colour three times (wooden cabinet doors are good for that), the walls twice and the worktop once (and slightly regretted it). We later added a bookshelf in an awkward corner for an overspill of recipe books.

But the layout and basic outline never changed which meant that cosmetic, or colour changes were easy and affordable and allowed the whole room to feel refreshed without having to spend a ton of money.

So where to start? It goes without saying that I’m not getting into budget specifics as everyone’s idea of affordable is different and costs will vary enormously depending on where you are and what you do. This, then, is for everything else.