Majjie's Blog

Maria sent me an e-mail recently asking for an opinion about her kitchen design (it's a service that's included with Majjie's Kitchen Design Guide).

Her kitchen is for a large extension, being built onto a Victorian house, which will have a sloping roof/ceiling. It needs to have lots of storage and lots of worktop space (Maria has a big family).

She'd designed the kitchen with Lidingo and Nexus units, from IKEA, in a layout that uses the space very well. Her questions were about what sort of colours to mix with the black and white of the unit doors, and about details of the plan.

My concerns were about the mixing of the two finishes. Lidingo is a traditional looking, white painted, panelled door ... whereas Nexus is a flat, oak veneered, modern style with horizontal grain ... and Maria had chosen the black stained version of it (called Brown Black).

To give herself lots of storage space, Maria designed a huge bank of extra tall units which included two built-in fridge-freezers and additional top boxes - and this was in black Nexus. Most of the rest of the kitchen was in Lidingo, except for some of the base units under a large peninsular section.

I got intrigued by the design and decided to put it onto my new CAD system ... and work out what I'd do. The pictures that follow show you my ideas ... although I haven't changed the actual layout much at all. That's all Maria's.

I think, if it was my kitchen, I'd have the huge bank of extra tall units in the more traditional Lidingo finish ... and use Nexus for most of the base and wall units. That sort of divides the working area of the kitchen from the living area ... and I think Maria's huge block of black might be a bit overpowering. The colours I've chosen to go with the black and white are yellow and orange.

I think I'd go even further and use one of the lighter oak shades of Nexus for the wall units - with maybe the diagonal corner units in Black Brown - since that would split the flat wall units up into modern looking blocks:

I've added even more tall units - shorter and shallower ones - although they may not work. The IKEA plan that Maria sent me was a bit vague about the internal walls and doors:

There's also one Lidingo glazed wall unit and I'd use Lidingo doors for the back and end of the peninsular unit - to give a panelled effect. You'll see these from the sofa at the other end of the room:

Anyway ... see what you think. This is a top view of the new room which shows you the overall layout:

I'll let you know what Maria thinks ... or perhaps she'll come and comment herself.