Kitchen? What Kitchen?

Do you remember when kitchens were supposed to look like kitchens? I do. By Kiesha Meikle

That was before someone decided that kitchen doors and kitchen units had to be seamlessly hidden away or disguised as something else. Those who have an interest in interior design would have seen this shift happening – even those who don’t must have noticed.

It’s not just the kitchens featured in magazines, consumers have bought into this trend in a big way. The traditional country house kitchen has all but disappeared from the modern home – especially in inner cities.

It has alot to do with the way we live now.

With space at a premium, many of us have opted for more of an open plan layout – giving more visual space, if not actual space. Where once you may have had a kitchen in it’s own room, that has been replaced with a kitchen come diner, come sitting room. With this kind of setup it’s no wonder that we are all trying to hide our white goods away – after all, who wants to sit staring at a fridge or washing machine over Netflix and cocktails?

It started with concealed cookers, now cupboards have hidden handles and even sinks come with granite, marble or wooden covers. The kitchen as we used to know it has evolved with us, but is this a good thing?

I remember growing up in a kitchen that was in every sense ‘traditional’. It always smelled of cooking, it was messy most of the time and the large family table was covered in crayon and dried on food – none of this mattered because we could always close the door on the anarchy.

Our kitchen was the heart of our house, but importantly it was not part of the far fancier dining room or front room, which was neat and tidy as a pin. It worked well for our lifestyles and I doubt we would have been able to live in the same way with an open plan, stylishly hidden kitchen.