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Kitchen Workbook: How to Find Your Kitchen Style
If you're planning to remodel your kitchen, you've got to start somewhere: Here's how to find inspiration and start narrowing it down
Rebekah Zaveloff, owner and principal designer of KitchenLab, co-founder of Design in a Bag.com and Houzz contributor. I'm a self-professed tile nut and believer in good design for all! You can also visit me at: http://kitchenlabdesign.com and http://designinabag.com
Rebekah Zaveloff, owner and principal designer of KitchenLab, co-founder... More »
When most homeowners embark on a kitchen remodel, they spend endless hours collecting inspiring kitchen photos. But this doesn't necessarily help a person figure out what they want, and can even cause confusion. Most people don't have a favorite single look. If you're like me, you suffer from multiple personalities in the design department. The tough part of the process is learning to narrow down the options and hone in on what you want your dream kitchen to look like.
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| Here are some tips to help you through step 1: Collect images at random. Collect images that speak to you emotionally without thinking about why (at least for right now). Believe me, there's a pattern there — you may not be able to see it at first, but a pattern will show itself. You may find that a whole bunch of your kitchen inspiration images may need to be added to an ideabook for a future farmhouse or weekend getaway, but don't skip over them just because they don't relate to this project, save them for later. Don't edit yourself (yet). Don't make yourself nuts from the get-go by trying to edit as you collect. I really believe in collecting with reckless abandon first and editing later. Editing yourself while you gather inspiration is certain death for creativity. Organize (but only if you want to). It's OK to be unorganized and even a little messy — this is creativity after all! So what if your collections are a bit of a mess with no rhyme or reason. If you are fabulously organized, then you're a step ahead of us, but for those who aren't, don't sweat it. There's time to go back over all this stuff and label it later. Start looking for a pro. This can be a great time to start noting the professionals who are responsible for the designs you like and looking for a design professional you might like to interview. For some homeowners, the right thing to do is hire a professional out of the gate and have him or her help you through this inspiration-gathering phase. Some homeowners even hand this off completely to a designer, and it's the designer's job to listen, interpret and collect inspiration for the client and bring it back for approval. Browse thousands of kitchen photos |
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Categorize. Once you have a fair number of inspiration images to work with, go back through them and put them into loose categories.
You can categorize by style: Maybe you seem to fall on the fence between vintage and modern. Or maybe you find that you have a bunch of images of kitchens with dark wood floors. You can create a collection dedicated completely to islands or kitchen banquette seating. One for lighting, one for wallpaper, etc.
We'll get into exploring your style with the next installment, so for now don't think about why you like things, just that you do or don't.
You can categorize by style: Maybe you seem to fall on the fence between vintage and modern. Or maybe you find that you have a bunch of images of kitchens with dark wood floors. You can create a collection dedicated completely to islands or kitchen banquette seating. One for lighting, one for wallpaper, etc.
We'll get into exploring your style with the next installment, so for now don't think about why you like things, just that you do or don't.
by Vendome Press
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Edit. Go back through those folders and ideabooks and see if you still respond emotionally to the images within.
If it's been a while since you started gathering inspiration and you've looks at hundreds of spaces, your taste might have changed without you even realizing it. Ruthless editing can really help clarify things ... you'll look at a room and say "Why on earth did I save that photo?"
If you can't remember and it doesn't speak to you any longer, ditch it. See how easy that was?
If it's been a while since you started gathering inspiration and you've looks at hundreds of spaces, your taste might have changed without you even realizing it. Ruthless editing can really help clarify things ... you'll look at a room and say "Why on earth did I save that photo?"
If you can't remember and it doesn't speak to you any longer, ditch it. See how easy that was?
by Fiorella Design
»
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Collect images with intention. Now that you've collected at random, categorized and edited, go back through all your saved photos, and visit all your old online haunts — and search images for specific items.
Look only for glass-front cabinets, industrial hoods or island lighting ... not at the image as a whole. You might not like an overall room at all, but one element could be exactly what you want. I do this for every client, and often for multiple parts of each client's job. I pull inspiration images and I say "don't look at the wall color or the cabinet style; just look at the hood" or "look at the way the crown molding transitions around the beam and hood" or something very specific like that. Then edit again.
Next: Determine Your Scope of Work
More:
Find Your Personal Kitchen Style
How to Remodel Your Kitchen
Look only for glass-front cabinets, industrial hoods or island lighting ... not at the image as a whole. You might not like an overall room at all, but one element could be exactly what you want. I do this for every client, and often for multiple parts of each client's job. I pull inspiration images and I say "don't look at the wall color or the cabinet style; just look at the hood" or "look at the way the crown molding transitions around the beam and hood" or something very specific like that. Then edit again.
Next: Determine Your Scope of Work
More:
Find Your Personal Kitchen Style
How to Remodel Your Kitchen
Ideabook updated on May 19, 2013.
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I've done all the collecting of pictures etc. So far, none of the people that came out and quoted were interested in seeing my collection. They, no doubt, would be willing to invest more time, if I hired them. I do have a good idea of what I want as far as what look, what sort of storage, what kind of appliances, what I don't know is how to put it all together
I have called out some professionals to give me ideas and (naturally) they won't do a drawing unless/until I've hired them, but I have trouble remembering what they suggested 5 minutes after they left, so I find it hard to decide whom to go with. They all came up with different suggestions and they all sound really good at the time, but end up giving contradictory advice to each other. As I'm no expert, no idea which one of them is right. I don't have any personal recommendations, so have to go with my gut. I can't afford to hire several designers to design a kitchen, so that I can decide which I like best, so I find it very difficult to decide. I have only spoken to kitchen design companies so far. They are companies that do the design, make the cabinets and project manage the whole thing, including hiring all the various tradesmen needed. As their suggestions are all different, so are their prices and it is impossible to compare them. Would I be better off hiring an architect or someone that just does the design part, so that I can present all the kitchen people with MY drawings, so that I can compare apples with apples? I am worried that if I go that way, it would cost a lot extra, but at the same time am also worried about hiring the wrong person to do the kitchen. It may prove to be false economy. This will DEFINITELY be the last kitchen I'll ever do – it will have to last me the rest of my life, but my budget is still limited, as I am a pensioner.
Doing this over the months prior to choosing the various elements that would create my kitchen renovation made my life SO much easier when it came time to go shopping for appliances, cabinets, etc. I would have never remembered all the little nuances that bugged me so much in the past. Having the information needed to fix them wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't kept this ongoing list!