For many of us, the kitchen is the heart of the home. A place to relax, to carry out household business, for the kids to do their homework and, of course, to prepare food. People spend significant amounts of money turning their kitchen space into something warm, inviting and homely.

However, not everybody uses their kitchen to such an extent. Some people, especially in big cities like London I would imagine, eat out more often than they eat in. Meaning that they only require the use of a kitchen on odd occasions, such as when hosting a dinner party, or having the parents/grown up children around for the weekend.

Combine this with the current design trends for minimalism, simplicity, elegance and de-cluttering and you have a market that has opened up for small, barely noticeable kitchens that do not dominate the space within a home.

What if you could go one better though? What if you could have a kitchen that for all intents and purposes does not exist, except for when it is needed?

It is with this in mind that the disappearing kitchen was conceived and we are here today to tell you a little about them.

A Vanishing Act

The clue to disappearing kitchens lies in the name. You have a regular kitchen with a sink, stove, cupboards, fridge, worktop and everything else you would expect a kitchen to have. The only difference is that all you have to do is touch a button and the wall folds down to cover the entire space, leaving you with something that just looks like a stylish set of cupboards.

This gives you the convenience of your kitchen space always being available (such as when you need your toast and coffee in the morning), but being easily concealable at the same time. Perfect for that large studio apartment, where you want to maximise the available floor space. Or maybe you have a lot of parties and you want to be able to transform your space from a home to a party house at the touch of a button?

I fantastic way to take minimalism to its ludicrous (and yet wonderful) extreme, disappearing kitchens should satisfy the neat-freak in all of us and make sure that your Feng-Shui lines go undisturbed (if you’re into that sort of thing).

Not all disappearing kitchens are so futuristic though. Whilst a fully mechanised folding wall is undoubtedly cool, you may not desire such a futuristic design for your home.

Well, you’ll be pleased to know that disappearing kitchens will work just as well with a more traditional aesthetic. Instead of a modern looking folding wall that operates with electronic mechanisms, you could have large cupboard doors that open and close manually, giving the appearance of traditional, Parisian etc. wall panels.

A Little Less Extreme

It could be that you don’t need your kitchen to vanish entirely. As the trend for less and less home cooking continues, particularly amongst younger home owning bachelors and bachelorettes, you may just want your kitchen space to be smaller and tucked away in the corner.

Thankfully you are covered here as well. You may be surprised at just how little room you can squeeze the essential functions of a kitchen into. I fact newly built flats are now being constructed with as much as 2.3 square meters less space devoted to the kitchen, which is about a third of the size they used to be.

So, whether you need your kitchen to fade into the background because you don’t have enough space available for it, or because your priorities are leaning more towards entertaining and parties, a disappearing kitchen could be the solution for you.

Whether, your home is of a traditional aesthetic or modern, whether you want the kitchen to vanish entirely or simply take up as little space as possible, disappearing kitchen design has you covered.

We hope you enjoyed this little introduction to the wonderful world of the aesthetic possibilities of disappearing kitchen design. We don’t expect the desire for large homely kitchens to vanish any time soon, as larger family homes will always need that extra space for all of the familial tasks that we have already discussed.

However, for flats and apartments aimed at younger people (or simply people without large families), you can probably look forward to seeing this trend for smaller and smaller kitchens to continue. So, no may be the time to get ahead of the curve and think about disappearing kitchens for your home.

As always, please get in touch if you want to discuss these or any other kitchen designs with us. Our great staff will be more than happy to discuss any and all options that you may want to consider for your new kitchen.

Also let us know if you’ve seen any great disappearing kitchen design ideas on your travels.

 

Have fun.