Space-saving small kitchens can still be mighty, they just need some clever design ideas. These 12 small kitchen design ideas can make your kitchen layout more practical, stylish, elegant, and spacious.
Small Kitchen Design Ideas
How to Design a Small and Practical Kitchen: 12 Useful Kitchen Hacks
If you decide to have splendid small kitchens, you will need to change some ideas inside you, and you will think about your lifestyle in a minimalistic way.
And if you care about food and its preparation, no matter how small your kitchen is, this should work for you and you should have enough space and counter space to enable you to prepare and store a wide variety of foods, spices, and all your small appliances.
And if you have a helping hand in the kitchen, you'll need enough space for two people to work side by side, therefore, a corridor should be created as wide as possible for two humans to stand and work comfortably at one time.
Here are 12 useful kitchen hacks and our favorite tips for designing a small and practical kitchen that works beautifully and comfortably for you and your family.
12 Space-saving Small Kitchen Design Ideas
With these 12 small kitchen design ideas, you can make your kitchen layout more practical, stylish, elegant, and spacious.
1. Think about Cool Kitchen Gadgets:
Every kitchen, no matter how small, will require certain appliances to prepare and store food and this means that you need to have a refrigerator, stove, oven, microwave, and any other appliances to help you cook for your family.
If you have the refrigerator, oven, and any other bulky appliances included in their cubby area, maintain a central aisle from bulging appliances. And if you don't have room for a full-size fridge, consider a compact or small fridge under the sink area.
As for your oven, there are many small kitchens that deal with a built-in stovetop, and some have narrow ovens, like the kind you often see in Europe. Those kitchens with only stoves often have a microwave to supplement the ability to heat food.
The good news is that there are compact versions available for all of these appliances, and once you purchase these mini versions for your kitchen essentials, consider these tricks to maximize space in your kitchen:
2. Maximize your storage space:
Now that the essential appliances are in place, let's look at how to maximize space in other prominent areas of your kitchen.
To maximize your kitchen storage space, the following can be done:
3. Put small necessities inside the closet doors:
Screw your closet doors (especially under your sink) by screwing in a few hooks for potholes, gloves, rags, and towels.
4. Fix hooks and movable shelves:
Go with hooks attached to the bottom of the sink to hold a basket or two for scrubbing pads, scrubbing brushes, and the like. And if you really want to make the most of this space, install a few movable shelves under the sink and watch for any water leakage. But beware because you don't want to destroy anything in these shelves with excess moisture or water dripping on them, and inside other cabinet doors you can hang measuring cups on hooks.
5. Use your fridge more efficiently:
Keep used food upfront. Keep opened foods or foods that are about to expire on the front shelves of the refrigerator, in front of newer items. Don't just place magnetic calendars from your local real estate office on the refrigerator door, but instead place the magnets on small shelves and clip them to the refrigerator to store small, commonly used items. This allows you to instantly increase your storage space, without cluttering your countertops.
6. Think Unique Storage Space Ideas:
There are many ideas for saving space when you need to store all your kitchen needs and no matter how many ideas we include here, there will always be ways people can learn how to save space and increase their storage space.
Here are some unique kitchen storage ideas that may be useful to you:
7. Consider the narrow rolling cart:
Rolling storage carts can be used for everything from spices to utensils to staples like sugar, salt, and flour. And a rolling cart with a countertop can become a nice decorative element with dishes on one level below the top and utensils like casseroles on the bottom level.
8. Place cutting boards vertically:
Use a metal file divider to store baking boards and cutting boards vertically, instead of leaving this pile in a cupboard somewhere, storing it vertically allows you to always know where it is, grab it easily and it takes up less space.
9. Insert horizontal storage shelves:
Since you have a small kitchen, you probably don't have a lot of shelves for storing kitchen essentials, and instead, hastily stack items on top of each other.
You can increase your space by inserting more shelves into the already built-in shelving spaces. This will not only increase your storage space significantly, but also you will be more organized.
10. Benefit from the ceiling:
Placing ceilings is of good use and many beautiful pieces of metal are made to hang pots and pans these days, and you've probably seen these features in restaurants and kitchens.
Why not use this in your small kitchen too? Instead of trying to store your big pots and pans under countertops, let them hang out in the open and this will save you space and make them easily accessible when you need them.
11. Use the top edge for storage:
Depending on your ceiling height, which doesn't exceed 9 in small homes, don't forget the ledge space above your closet assuming you can get there, try to use that extra space to store items you don't need often.
You can also use the sides of the cabinets for extra storage too, so loosen some hooks in the side to hang tools, or other frequently used items.
And if you're short on cabinets, consider installing multi-level storage shelves and decide what you'll put on those shelves before you drill holes to ensure there's enough vertical space between each one.
12. Eating in the kitchen:
If you're planning to eat in the kitchen, you'll need to plan ahead and visualize what's best for you. You can try a foldable dining table or use it as an extra counter while preparing food.
You can make it quickly when you need it, and divide it when you don't, this gives you a chance to move around easily while preparing your meal, but still, have a place to eat when it's time to break the bread.