Functional Cabinet Design

These days everyone is talking about the functionality of their product without actually answering the question, what is functionality?

As we have been talking about on our Social Media feed, the majority of new kitchen owners are, overtime, not satisfied with the functionality and layout of their kitchen. And out of the half that would be satisfied, how many of them really know about the many different options available to improve both the functionality and layout of a kitchen? We aim to bring light to this topic over the next year.

We recently had a presentation done by Blum, whose cabinet hardware is standard on all our products. The idea of the presentation was called 'Dynamic Space' and revolved around the central theme of more practical kitchen design leading to more efficient use. The three main themes that were being followed are simple workflows, optimal space usage, and top-quality motion.

Simple workflow basically talks about taking the normal recurring activities done in any kitchen and making sure that the placement of everything you need to carry out those activities is organized and efficiently placed. This is done by first dividing everything found in your everyday kitchen into five zones.

• Consumables
• Non-Consumables
• Cleaning
• Preparation
• Cooking

Once you have established the five zones, you should work with your designer to figure out where the zones are to be located and how best to provide access to these zones. Things like drawers instead of doors, full extension slides, ergonomic levels, inner drawer dividers, and maximum length & height drawers can all help you gain more space but also make the workflow a lot easier to manage.

Functional kitchens should have enough storage space. Storage space requirements will change depending on many different things, such as cooking habits, lifestyle, and family size. Because the average lifespan of a kitchen in Canada is 15-20 years, future requirements such as additional family members should also be taken into consideration. A few things to consider.

These are all easily added items that can increase your storage space significantly without necessarily changing the size of the kitchen. For owners that have limited space to work with, these are questions you should be asking your kitchen designer.

Using wider drawers instead of sectioning the space can create up to 15% more storage space

Maximizing the full height of each drawer, something a lot of cabinet manufacturers do not do can increase storage space up to 55%

Drawers with greater depth can increase storage space by up to 30%

Drawers with greater depth can increase storage space by up to 30%

Corner drawers solve the problem with efficient in inaccessible corner storage

All the ideas we have talked about only work if you have the technology and high-quality hardware to make this all possible. On average, you are going to be opening and closing your drawers 7,500 per year, so is it not essential to have the smoothest and softest closing action? Our drawer runners have been weighed down and tested to work perfectly for 100,000 cycles and have won numerous design and innovation awards over the years. Not only is it important to ask your kitchen designer about the quality of the hardware being using in your kitchen, but one could argue it is not even possible to create simple workflows or optimal storage usage without the use of high-quality cabinet hardware. Some of the practical ideas we have to improve motion:

Soft Close Hardware
Electrical Assist Opening Systems
Mechanical Opening Systems