The kitchen is a key area of your home, impacting both the quality of life for your family and your property’s value. Investors often focus on the kitchen as it reflects how well-maintained the property is.
Your kitchen tells the story of the years you have spent in the house. Make this story engrossing by upgrading it to your desired level of style and ease of use. When planning a kitchen renovation in NSW, think beyond the everyday hassles of using your kitchen and consider the factors that will add to the value of your property in the long run.
Here are a few kitchen upgrade ideas that will make you feel accomplished after a renovation and boost your house’s value.
Upgrade Flooring
This step is crucial for you if your kitchen supports a hardwood or vinyl floor. Hardwood floors require periodic cleaning and staining. If your floor is worn out and cannot be restored, think about replacing it. Replacement is necessary for vinyl floors every ten years, even if you keep it properly maintained.
Polish and refinish stone floors periodically, which also applies to tiled surfaces. If you want to repaint and remodel your kitchen, you may change the flooring. More modern kitchens are tiled or have wooden floors.
In addition to upgrading your flooring, another significant kitchen improvement is modernising the cabinets.
Modernise the Cabinets
If you plan to resell your home soon, it’s important to consider the potential buyer’s preferences. Think about the ideal dweller for your home, or ask for trending kitchen design ideas from the construction and renovation company you are working with.
Consider these questions:
- How will an average person arrange their cabinets?
- How much storage space will they need?
- What organisation options should be in place for them?
If you plan to live in the house for a decade or so, focus on planning your cabinets to meet your long-term storage needs. Draw inspiration from your preferences and daily navigation around your kitchen to create a layout that works best for you.
- Smart Storage: Add pull-out shelves, deep drawers, and dividers to make it easier to access and organise your kitchen essentials, ensuring everything has its place.
- Customisation: Invest in adjustable shelves and modular cabinetry for flexibility as your needs evolve.
Adding a pantry for increased storage is also an option if you want to upgrade your appliance collection or expand your cooking skills to include international cuisines. While a pantry cabinet may seem like a reasonable option, think beyond your immediate needs and consider adding a walk-in pantry to increase your property value.
- Walk-in Pantry: Not only does it enhance storage capacity, but it also boosts the overall appeal and value of your home.
- Multi-use Cabinets: Consider cabinets that double as workspaces or integrate modern features like built-in charging stations for electronics.
By modernising your cabinets with thoughtful design and functionality, you’ll improve both your kitchen’s practicality and marketability.
Change Countertops
If your kitchen feels old and worn out, its countertop might be the problem. Your kitchen counters are the busiest surfaces in the home. You have to use them to place essentials, prepare your food, and place your appliances in between moving them.
Countertops naturally get stained and worn out more easily than other surfaces. Cracks and stubborn stains are a few tell-tale signs of an outdated countertop. Even if you don’t witness these indications of replacement, counters receive the most attention from visitors. A kitchen renovation without replacing these surfaces will always go unnoticed.
Stain-resistant options, including granite, quartz, and soapstone, suit kitchen tops because of their excessive workload. Match their colour with the planned colour palette for the kitchen.
Repaint Your Kitchen
Repainting your kitchen gives it a fresh look and can compensate for missed cabinet renovations if done correctly. Choose a colour that complements your kitchen’s environment. If you have an open kitchen where the family gathers, make sure the colours blend with the rest of your home.
Personalise Your Space
If your kitchen is more secluded, use the repainting process to add a personal touch. Modern kitchen design ideas often feature all-black or all-white palettes. You can incorporate accent colours to add a unique presence and style to your kitchen.
Highlight Natural Elements
If your kitchen features natural elements, enhance them with your paint choice. If your space receives plenty of natural light, consider adding indoor plants to highlight this. A light colour scheme with bright natural hues can help welcome and amplify the light in your kitchen.
Focus the Lights
Lights are the finishing touch every room needs to either complete the look or ruin it. These lights should match the emotion you want to convey in your kitchen. Make your kitchen welcoming for daytime meals with natural lights.
Build an inviting ambience for your family to get together in the evening with more relaxing lights featuring low colour temperature and reasonable brightness. If you want to invite your family to help you out in the kitchen at major events, you should also build a feature of high luminosity with ceiling lights.
In Conclusion: Smart Kitchen Changes for a Better Home
The kitchen is the busiest room in any household, receiving heavy foot traffic second only to the living room. Likewise, it wears down quickly and requires frequent remodelling and renovation. This blog post discusses some basic features that need to be upgraded during a five-year kitchen remodelling project. If you think your kitchen is good enough without upgraded storage, you should only repaint it. In many cases, however, your kitchen will need an appliance upgrade and a change in layout to match modern interior design standards.