Practical Ideas From Kitchen Showrooms: Intelligent Design Ideas For Small Rooms

Kitchen showrooms aren’t meant to show off unrealistic designs. You can actually get many practical ideas to apply in your own home. Some ideas are particularly useful for small kitchens, which seem to have limited room for creativity.

1. Vertical Stripes For Greater Height

You probably know that horizontal stripes will make small spaces appear wider. However, you might not realize that vertical stripes would also be suited to such small spaces.

Just as horizontal lines alter your perception of width, so also vertical lines change your perception of height. By applying vertical stripes, you can make the ceiling appear much higher. This too will give your room a more spacious feel, especially if you’re claustrophobic.

In order to produce the right effect, knowledge of the right colors to use in creating vertical stripes is essential. Based on the requirements of the national register on VET (Vocational Education and Training) in Australia, a designer must be proficient in use of color for effective communication of desired concepts or ideas. Only with such knowledge would the designer produce the right effect of greater spaciousness within a small room.

2. Add Depth With Venetian Plaster

There are actually more ways than one through which you can create the perception of higher ceilings. Apart from using vertical stripes, you can also add Venetian plaster to the ceiling. Unlike vertical stripes that simply create a visual perception, the polished finish of Venetian plaster would reflect light, which makes such a ceiling appear much higher than it is.

In case you have a significant budget, you can go all the way and actually raise your ceiling. Take note that such a renovation project would be quite costly.

3. Install Luminous Material

This installation offers you another option for creating the illusion of spaciousness in your cooking area. Light reflected off of the luminous material serves the purpose of enhancing brightness, as well as the perception of greater depth within the kitchen.

The backsplash is a very good place to target for installation of luminous material. This is especially so if it is overhang by glass-front upper cabinets. You can achieve this by installing white marble, which has a shiny surface that would give even more depth to the backsplash surface.

However, application of luminous materials should be done wisely with regard to people who use the kitchen. This is especially so, since the Government of South Australia provides some recommendations concerning application of luminance contrast suitable for people with vision impairment or elderly persons. In this regard, antiglare surfaces are required; whereas colors should only provide approximately 30% luminance contrast.

4. Diagonal Flooring For Greater Width

Obviously, you would want the feel of spaciousness not just when looking at the walls and ceiling, but also when looking down at the floor. This is something that might be of much more concern in narrow, gallery-shaped kitchen layouts.

To achieve the perception of wider floor space, you need to break away from conventional designs. Why not try installing diagonal flooring, which give the perception of greater width, unlike the conventional square patterns.