The kitchen is one of the busiest and most-used rooms of the house, whether you live alone, are a couple, or a large family. It sees a lot of activity in terms of lifestyle and routine, making it the key spot if you’re looking for a sociable space in your house. This could be meal times, social gatherings, or celebrations hosted at home.
Not every kitchen is readily equipped to be a highly sociable space. Your current kitchen may not allow enough room for lots of people or may not provide a welcoming space to relax.
There’s nothing more sociable than an open plan, and this also makes your general living area more sociable, too. It opens up the entire space to have one big gathering spot for family, friends, or simply to be able to talk to your partner or kids whilst one of you is in the kitchen, and the other is relaxing on the sofa.
Traditional kitchens have their counters around the edge of the room, and in using them, you’re usually facing the wall. Whether it’s preparing a meal or preparing drinks, your back will be to the rest of the people in the kitchen, which is where a kitchen island can come in handy. It’s a great spot to prepare food or drink while being able to stand in the centre and even have the other people sit at the island with a bar stool or easily help you out with what you’re preparing.
Don’t forget that you can make any kitchen layout fit the space you have, large or small, with bespoke kitchen refurbishment.
Kitchen organisation is key, not only for where your essentials are placed, but for where you’re going to stand to prepare food and drink. If items you need and use every day, such as a coffee machine or the oven, are placed in a far corner, this is going to be less sociable when you need to use them if you’re standing at the far side of the room. Likewise, setting up the drinks cabinet in a tight corner rather than a spot everyone can gather around can make it more difficult when you have friends and family over.
Therefore, thinking about what you place and where will greatly help create a more cohesive space for everyone to enjoy.
If you want to avoid people awkwardly hovering whilst you’re all in the kitchen, kitchen chairs or bar stools are a must-have option to create a more welcoming space. You might even want your full dining table in the kitchen so that you can all sit, eat and chat in the same area, but if this isn’t possible with a smaller kitchen, a few stools or even just a small side table (or a kitchen island counter, as mentioned above) can be great choices.