Top 10 Kitchen Design Mistakes

Are you designing a kitchen or remodeling an old one? After 14 years of organizing kitchens, we present our Top 10 Kitchen Design Mistakes.

10. Banquettes. Not to be confused with a banquet, a banquette is a built-in bench along a wall used for seating around a table. Banquettes are used to save space, and though we embrace that idea, these are very uncomfortable because of their straight backs. They are also inconvenient. Think of booth seating at a restaurant: when one person needs to get up, everyone has to slide out. For these reasons, we give banquettes the boot.

9. One overhead light for the entire kitchen. To add a cherry on top, make it a fluorescent light. In most kitchens, a single light is not adequate. Period. To remedy the situation, add recessed lighting, and consider pendant lights and under the cabinet lights as well. Bringing more light into your kitchen will make a world of difference.

8. Pot Racks. Some people want the convenience of easily grabbing the pot they need from up above. It sounds good in theory. But consider your pots and pans. Are they all matching and shiny? Neither are mine. Displaying stained, mismatched pots and pans is unattractive, and hanging them from the ceiling makes a place feel cluttered.

7. A pull-out spice rack built into lower cabinets. When I first heard about it, I thought it was the coolest idea ever…. until I tried to organize one for a client. When standing, you can only see the lids of the spices on the top row, which have no label. And, you can’t see any of the other spices without squatting down to read them. We vote to place one of these in an upper cabinet or skip it altogether and opt for this instead. 

6. Placing a stove in an island. We all teach kids to keep their hands away from a hot stove. However, when a stove is on the island, and people are seated around it, it is easier to get burned. Hello, safety! People naturally gather around an island in the kitchen. Who wants to cozy up next to the stove? Awkward. A better option is to have the stove behind the island and leave the island for prepping, serving, and conversations.

5. The kitchen desk. Originally intended to solve paper problems, the built-in kitchen desk was a staple in homes for a long time. Unfortunately, these desks attract clutter instead. It becomes a dumping ground for school papers, backpacks, supplies, keys, bills, files, mail, and anything else that doesn’t have a home. 

4. Tiled counters. Saving money on a tiled counter seems like a great idea until you try to clean them. Tiled counters are a maintenance headache! Crumbs get stuck in the crevices, grout harbors bacteria, and let’s face it, it’s much easier to wipe a flat surface! Opt for a large piece of granite, quartz, or even laminate for that matter. It will be worth it!

3. Glass cabinet doors (or it’s cousin open shelving). Sure it looks great on TV when staged, but do you want your most precious real estate of kitchen cabinets to be storage for display items? Or worse, displaying your eclectic plastic cup collection? Even when the cabinets are organized, it feels cluttered. Better to keep things behind closed doors. If you do want to display pretty items, use glass on the very top cabinets, as shown here.

2. Not planning a space for the trash. I can’t tell you how many kitchens I’ve organized where there is not a place for the garbage. If you have a large kitchen with lots of cabinets, you may have the luxury of giving up a cabinet for a pull-out trash can. If that’s not an option, use a nice trash can with a lid and place it alongside an island or tuck it in a corner. Still, I’ve seen kitchens where even that won’t work. Do yourself a favor and consider where you will store your trash can before your kitchen renovation. 

1. The narrow lower cabinet with a blind corner. What were these designers thinking? If reaching into the blind corner isn’t bad enough, the opening is so small you can barely see what’s back there. And then there’s no lighting. Many kitchen items have gone to die in those blind corners. If you are stuck with one of these cabinets, it would be well worth the investment of having one of these installed.

For more organizing help, give us a call. We’d love to organize your kitchen or go over your kitchen designs with you before your renovation.