How to plan and create the perfect kitchen for your home

A kitchen is a big investment and ought to perform for years with good planning and advice from the professionals 

Interior designer Sinead Cassidy's newly fitted kitchen is easy to maintain, with industrial styling softened by slat detailing on the island and comfortable upholstered bar stools.

What do you think of those boiling water taps being touted on TV?

Some people love them, but woe betide if your area is cursed with limescale as the tap can clog up, like your kettle, despite the vaunted filter.

It’s a topic that’s come up repeatedly while chatting to those in the know in my quest to design the perfect kitchen. Conclusion? The majority say save your budget for things of real value.

Aileen Kennedy, head designer at Brian O’Driscoll Kitchens, advises detailed planning of your new kitchen before the builder starts as once the services go in the location of your appliances is set in concrete, literally.

Planning to include practical, day-to-day needs is essential, but also to have something of beauty that you love, like dove tailed drawers or a tea and coffee station (Kitchen by O'Driscoll's Kitchens).

The decision-making can be exhausting for the client, according to Aileen, “but we’re there to mind you,” she says. “Hold onto the vision you have for your kitchen when you’re bogged down in the finer details of picking things like finishes.”

Getting to know her client’s lifestyle, she says, is key to a successful kitchen combining practicality with aesthetics, where there’s plenty of smart storage, but it seems we’re inclined to underestimate how long the project will take. “You’ll be without a functioning kitchen for a long time once work starts,” she says, “especially where flooring and lighting have to be installed.”

Someone who has already been there is Sharon Holland who revamped her family’s Georgian farmhouse in Co. Cork last year, building a modern but sympathetically designed kitchen extension onto the historic house.

Sharon Holland's kitchen features smart storage in a broken-plan layout that semi separates her dining room from the kitchen.

In hindsight, she says she wishes she had contacted her kitchen maker earlier. “People don’t realise how long the wait can be for good makers,” she says. “It saves you time and energy.

“There were small things that afterwards I knew he was right about like LED lights in the pantry shelves. I wish I’d done that now.”

For her pantry cupboard banks, if she had her time over, she says she’d opt for pocket doors.

“You can have them permanently open or closed,” she says, “and they won’t block anything when open like regular doors.”

But there are decisions she is especially pleased with, including picking up her appliances second-hand.

“I reckon I saved around €3,500,” she says. “But be careful of things that have water running through them like the dishwasher. If it comes from a hard water area it might have limescale.”

The pantry cupboard bank in Sharon Holland's kitchen includes a tea and coffee station where all the necessary equipment is in one space, with a mixture of shelving and drawer storage.

Sharon also opted for a broken-plan design rather than full open-plan between the new extension and the dining room located in the older part of the house, which means, she says, “you’re not looking at dirty saucepans but still connected to the kitchen.”

And she also loves her coffee and tea dock in the pantry cupboard bank where all the necessary paraphernalia is in one place — kettle, coffee machine and cups.

Just in time for Christmas 2022, interior designer Sinéad Cassidy has installed a new kitchen in her Cork City home, this time replacing a French oak shaker-style she chose in 2007 and later hand-painted.

A tall larder and fridge unit in Sinéad Cassidy's new kitchen has moved location to open up the view to the garden, while white Dekton countertops reflect light, replacing black granite.

 “I found the hand-painted hard to maintain and wanted an easier upkeep,” Sinead explains. “Many of the appliances also needed replacing. The location of the tall larder and fridge unit always niggled me as I felt it disrupted the view to the garden.

“My starting point was to select the kind of finish and colour I wanted for my unit doors, followed by the flooring,” she says. “These two materials in hand paved the way for my overall final design and layout. Appliance selection was next and it is good to order these as early as possible in case of delays.”

The result is an industrial-look with handle-free floor to ceiling units, and a larger island which Sinéad has softened up with vertical wooden slat detailing on the façade and a white Dekton countertop which, she says, “reflects the light brilliantly compared to the previous black granite.”

She’s particularly pleased with her kitchen floor finished in large-scale terrazzo tiling that looks like polished concrete, with engineered wide plank flooring in the rest of the open-plan area, making it easier to maintain with two dogs.

“The new kitchen is wildly different to what it was and it’s been fun to reinvent the space,” Sinéad says. “Simplicity, functional, and easy maintenance was the brief. The look is crisp and clutter-less. Who would guess that the dogs were ever allowed in?”

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