Designing A Kitchen Extension Around Your Family

**Collaborative Post**

AD: The kitchen is the heart of every home and particularly when you have children. You’ll spend a lot of time there, cooking, eating breakfast and meals together, making packed lunches, and probably checking homework. The kitchen can be the hub of some family homes, and you might be surprised at how much time you spend in it!

If your kitchen is feeling a little cramped or your family is growing and you need more space, perhaps it's time to consider an extension to make life a bit easier and give you more space.

Assess Your Family’s Needs 

Before you decide on the design for your kitchen extension, it’s worth assessing what your family needs. Thinking about how you currently use your kitchen will help you plan for a better layout and get the most out of the new space. 

Although you may have your heart set on a design you’ve seen online or on TV, consider how practical it will be in everyday life. That’s not to say you shouldn’t have the kitchen of your dreams but keep your eye on the functionality of the design above everything else.

This pre-planning lets you include or eliminate any design ideas you may have for your new kitchen extension before you commit to anything.  

Open Plan Living 

With a growing family, space is at a premium in your home. Having an open-plan kitchen and dining area allows you to maximise the extension footprint.  

Depending on the size of the available space you could incorporate a separate dining area or a chill-out zone where your kids can amuse themselves while you cook.

This means you’re not dividing your time between the kitchen and other rooms to keep an eye on young children. Breakfast bars are a lot less formal than a dining table. If your teenagers would rather eat meals in their rooms, having a breakfast bar might just persuade them to eat in the kitchen instead.

 

Bring The Garden Closer 

An added bonus of designing a kitchen extension around your family is that you can include your garden in the plan. By opening up the house to the outside with bi fold doors, for example, you can increase the space for your kids to play while you cook but still have them under your watchful gaze. 

While on the subject of gardens, it is worth considering how much of the garden you are willing to sacrifice for your extension. Most families with young children appreciate outdoor spaces where kids can play safely in the fresh air and burn off some energy. Apart from the costs involved with a kitchen extension, the decision about how big it needs to be is an important consideration.  

Weighing up the benefit of a large kitchen, dining, and living space against the loss of part of your garden is important.  

Designing a kitchen extension around your family should begin with an honest assessment of what you need in terms of extra space. Then you can decide on the kind of layout that will work for your family and how large the kitchen extension will be. While functionality is important you also want a kitchen extension that the whole family will love.  

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