Kitchen Design Tips That Will Make It Look Bigger and Feel Larger

Kitchen Design and Remodeling Tips For A Bigger Look and Feel

While it's been said that "good things come in small packages," when it comes to your kitchen, that's not always the case. For some homeowners, taking down walls or building an addition onto the home to enlarge a kitchen is just not possible. If you have a smaller kitchen, there are creative design moves that can give you more storage and create a roomier feel.

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Sticking to white cabinets and walls is a good start, but there are plenty of other ways to create extra space, or at least give the illusion of a bigger room without sacrificing your kitchen's personality. This post looks at ways to balance storage, style, and long sightlines to make your kitchen look bigger, feel larger, and give you a more functional kitchen design!

Kitchen Design Tips For Creating Space

Changing paint colors to reducing clutter, adding space, or the illusion of space can be pretty straightforward. If you're starting from scratch with a "to-the-studs" remodeling, you'll have even more options, but even in well established, smaller kitchen design, there are plenty of ways to create the space you want while maintaining the functionality that you need.

Start By Using Light Colors

light colored backsplash, walls and ceiling - as well as the light maple floor - help this small kitchen to look and feel bigger than it is.

In interior and kitchen design, three components work together to determine how spacious a room feels. They are color, lighting, and the contents of the room. The easiest, quickest fix, particularly if you're not ready to cut back on cookware, or install better lighting, is to repaint. Walls that are dark and bold can make a kitchen feel crowded, or with the right contents, cozy – it a balance! Conversely lighter hues, can open up the space and make it feel airy. To create a sense of openness, use colors like antique whites, neutral off whites, creams, pale shades of gray, and light yellows.

Avoid Strong Contrast

Once you choose your light color, stick with it, and commit! Avoid the common mistake of trying to liven up your color palette by incorporating a bold-hued accent wall in an otherwise light-colored kitchen. If you have a large kitchen space, you have some leeway and can include an accent wall; however, in a smaller area, a strong visual contrast like this creates a "segmented" and restricted feeling. The best way to add visual interest and oomph into a monotone kitchen design is to play with the "extras." Introduce color in a small, non-permanent way, like colorful window treatments, tea towel, or accessories like canister sets.

Choose Smaller Appliances

Consider choosing smaller appliances for your smaller kitchen space. For example, most standard dishwashers are 24-inches wide. However, a compact or "condo-sized" one is 18-inches wide, and they're growing in popularity. That extra 6-inches can give you room for a bigger cabinet. Plus, a smaller dishwasher fills up faster, which means you can run a full load more often instead of waiting a day or running it half-full. 

Another space-saving measure, choosing a slimmer refrigerator, can open up your kitchen space. Often, homeowners want the largest fridge they can fit, but those 36-inch and up models often end up full of clutter or half empty. If you don't cook large meals often or regularly shop for fresh produce, slimming down the fridge to 30-inches wide or less can free up room for other essentials.

If you're not ready to slim down your appliances, you can still get a much lighter and more spacious look with panel appliances. Panel-ready appliances like refrigerators and dishwashers are designed to receive a door front of your choosing to blend into the rest of your cabinets. The resulting look is more fluid, which creates a larger, airier overall appearance. While panel-ready appliances and panels tend to be a more expensive choice, it will not only give you the illusion of more space; it creates a sophisticated and luxurious look!

Remove the Uppers and Use Open Shelving Instead!

open shelving around this range and hood helps the corner space feel wide open, cheerful and bright! it’s handy, too, for everyday dishes that get used and washed frequently.

In a smaller kitchen, removing all of the upper cabinets is probably not the most practical choice. Still, you can often add some open shelving to use to showcase your most attractive everyday kitchen items.

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A few open shelves on one wall, for example, flanking the range hood, can hold daily use dishware, storage jars, and bins, or cookbooks while giving the room a more open feel. Another option is flanking a window to provide a little extra breathing room, so the kitchen feels less stuffed. 

If you're not ready to fully commit to open shelving, you have options. For example, try removing the doors from a couple of cabinets to get that breezy look. If you're still not sure, you can replace the solid doors with glass insert cabinet doors. You'll get an airier look while keeping the dusting to a minimum. It's a great way to display attractive glassware or china. If you're uncomfortable showing off your stuff, opt for opaque glass inserts. They'll help hide what's inside the cabinets, and they still reflect light, brightening the overall kitchen.

Improve Your Lighting Design

this kitchen has layered lighting design: recessed can lights are for general lighting. undercabinet lights are for task lighting. pendants lights on the island provide task lighting, fill lighting and general lighting. and the upper lighted cabinets are for decorative lighting.

One of the best ways to create a sense of space is good lighting. Often kitchen lighting is insufficient, coming from a single ceiling fixture or a little natural light from a small window. Adding lighting under and above the cabinets can make the room feel brighter and bigger by removing dark shadows around the cabinets that visually shrink the space. 

The eye is naturally drawn to the highest contrasting point in a kitchen, and that's typically the top of the cabinets. Uplighting above the cabinets casts a gentle light and eases the visually contrast created by shadows making the entire room feel more open. Installing lighting underneath the cabinets directed onto the countertops works the same way. 

The best solution is to create a lighting design consisting of ambient, accent, task, and natural lighting, especially in a smaller kitchen space. 

The Takeaway...

While we all dream of having a spacious kitchen, sometimes your space or budget is limited. The fact is that with some planning, and a good designer, you can make even a small kitchen space look and feel larger while improving functionality. Whether you're taking your kitchen down to the studs and starting over or just looking for some inexpensive upgrades, these design rips can help you to make your kitchen look and feel bigger!

If you're planning a kitchen design and remodeling project and you live in the greater Madison, Wisconsin area, why not give the design experts at Degnan Design-Build-Remodel a call at (608) 846-5963.

We're here and always happy to answer your home improvement and remodeling questions. Let us help you create your dream kitchen!

This article was updated by Abe Degnan on 9/1/2022.