11 Kitchen Design Mistakes + how to fix them!

Do you enjoy walking into a chaotic kitchen after a draining day at work? Do you love to not find anything anytime you cook? Do you love to see grease and grime build up in impossible to clean places? Then don't watch this video because in the next few minutes I'm going to share with you 11 common design mistakes made in kitchens that, if avoided, would eliminate so many of these problems that I just talked about. Hi guys, if you're new to this channel my name is Baixu and I'm a licensed architect. Even though a lot of architects really love to look at skyscrapers and design huge buildings, I am kind of the opposite and I'm obsessed with interior design. So on this channel I'm going to share all of the design knowledge I know about how to create a beautiful home so we can all elevate our home design and make beautiful spaces together. Mistake number one, not taking cabinets all the way up to the ceiling. When you leave a gap between your cupboard and the ceiling you're essentially wasting all of that valuable vertical space that you can use as storage. Sure you can argue that you can still store things above the cabinets up there but realistically it's going to gather dust and grease over time and every time you want to use something from the upper levels you're going to have to clean it first. Second, it doesn't look very neat and well thought through when you have a design. When you live in a really old building and you have like four meter high ceilings with beautiful old buildings, sure I understand maybe then you don't take your cabinets all the way up to the ceiling. But if you live in a modern home and you have like a tiny gap between the ceiling and your cupboard, you just know that it's because people didn't really give this much thought about what they would do between the gap in between the cabinets. This awkward gap over time will collect grease, oil, dust. It's not going to be a nice environment maybe except for your cat and some bugs. If I were to build my kitchen now from scratch and if I advise clients who are making their own kitchens, I would tell them extend it all the way up. It will look cleaner, it will be more functional and just easier to maintain. If you want to have an easy beautiful life, at least in a very niche context of kitchen design, do this. Take the cabinets all the way up to the ceiling. This one is a bit controversial because it's super popular. Open plan kitchens. Please don't unsubscribe and don't click away yet. Let me explain. Open plan kitchens are super popular but I think they're problematic for two reasons. So first is that it's just not suitable for all cooking. Sure if you are someone who makes a lot of salads and you bake and use the oven a lot and maybe having an open plan kitchen is not such a problem but if you are someone who for example is Asian and enjoys Asian food where the cooking involves a lot of frying at high temperature with strong heat, a lot of oil, strong smells, an open plan kitchen is not suitable. The smell of stir-fried garlic and fish will just spread into your living room and the rest of your home. Second, in an open plan kitchen the mess and the operational side of cooking are exposed for everyone, yourself, your family, potential guests to see. Imagine that you invite people over for a dinner party. Dirty dishes, food scraps, you name it, they see it. The beauty of a separate kitchen is that you can just close the door on all the mess and all the smell so when your guests are eating at the dining table they are not disturbed by all the chaos. If you like the idea of having an open plan kitchen dining space because you want people to be able to see each other while you're all in this living environment, there are quite creative compromises you can make. You can have a semi-open kitchen layout where the kitchen is visually accessible but not fully open so you can just close some sliding doors over the opening when you want to hide the smell or you can install like glass critter doors or something so you can still see what's going on behind the kitchen but maybe the smell is kind of hidden and in front of the critter doors you can also install some curtains so you can also hide the mess when you don't want to see it. The third mistake is having the kitchen located at the entrance of your home. I know that in studio apartments sometimes this is inevitable but if you have a place that's larger in the studio and you have some say over the layout of the space, I would avoid putting the kitchen where it can be seen from the entrance. This is because kitchens can be very very operational messy spaces. The entrance of the home basically sets the tone for the rest of the space. Imagine walking to your home and the first thing that hits you is the leftover dishes. It's not the most welcoming sight is it? And every time you invite someone over you also have this additional pressure at the back of your head that your kitchen needs to be clean, tidy, instagrammable ready. That's just a lot of unnecessary pressure. So if you're in the planning stage of a home and you have some influence over this, talk to your architect about positioning the kitchen away from the main entrance. If you're stuck with the layout there are some options. You could use movable room dividers or you can use some strategically placed plants or furniture to block the immediate view into the kitchen or you can hang up some curtains also as a room divider. We agonize over the perfect desk height for our office but when it comes to the kitchen where we spend up to two, three hours per day, we settle for a one-size-fits-all solution. Humans are not created equal, at least in height they're not. Spending hours at a counter that's the wrong height for you can be generally uncomfortable and can cause shoulder and back pain. So if you get to build your own kitchen from scratch this is your chance to get it right. Take into account the height of the person who will be using the kitchen the most and pick a counter height that would make it more comfortable for them. Opting for shelves over drawers and base cabinets. When it comes to base cabinets many people automatically opt for the classic door and shelf combination mostly because it's the default and it's a bit cheaper but if you actually want to have a very comfortable kitchen I would really recommend looking into using drawers instead. I mean how many times have you had to contort yourself into human pretzel just to grab that pot at the back of the cabinet or bump your head trying to navigate dark corners under your countertop? Drawers offer superior accessibility allowing you to see and easily reach everything you've stored. If a full kitchen remodel is out of the question you can retrofit your existing cabinets with pull-out drawers to experience the same benefits on a budget. Corners and kitchens are often forgotten leaving you with awkward wasted space. Traditional cabinets and shelves rarely make efficient use of corner areas because let's be honest how often do you do an archaeological dig to find that last remaining spice jar or to find that lid that would be really really helpful once in a quarter? Before you just decide to block off the corner storage because it's useless and wasted space there are a lot of good solutions you can use. For instance Lazy Susan's have evolved into highly efficient rotating trays and there are even specialized Le Mans corner units named after the famous racetracks due to their unique shape that allows you to pull out the entire shelf for easy access. These solutions will allow you to use all of this wasted corner space efficiently and easier accessibility for you. Open shelves above kitchen countertops are all the rage right now they're basically on 90% of Pinterest kitchens that I see. Yes they look good but I think that's a design mistake. Not everyone collects artisanal mason jars or cafe worthy display worthy coffee mugs. Open shelves just become a catch-all for all sorts of clutter you have around you not to mention the dust and the grease that might collect over time. So if you love the look of open shelves maybe you can do a compromise and use glass fronted cabinets instead. This way your items are still protected but you can still have them beautifully displayed. Or don't go for a kitchen where the entire thing is just open shelf on the upper side. Maybe only pick 20 to 40 percent of it and make sure the open shelf is located in the zone that's away from the hob. Currently I have a problem where I have a shelf that's above my hob and honestly if it doesn't get cleaned once a week it's just going to be really really disgusting. Or only install open shelves in places where you think you don't really need that much storage. For example I have a secondary kitchen where it's basically a coffee and tea station and I know that there's not going to be any oil grease cooking in this area and we don't need much storage so we put a shelf above the kitchen where we only display pictures. Mistake number eight ignoring the It basically arranges the three main work areas in the kitchen which is the sink, hob and fridge to create a functional and efficient space and by placing these zones in a triangle a lot of time and effort can be saved because it is just the most efficient way for people to move around the kitchen. Saves you from doing a marathon every time you cook you know. Although I could use the extra exercise. So kitchen design experts agree that each leg of the triangle should be between 1.2 and 2.7 meters and the sum of all three sides should not exceed eight meters. These are the ideal measurements but take it with a grain of salt and you can just use it as a general guideline because we all know that some rooms can be super awkward, not everyone can arrange the appliances in this perfect configuration. But now that we know at least we can try. Mistake number nine having a dishwasher far from the sink. If you ever had to carry wet dripping dishes across your kitchen to the dishwasher you know exactly what I'm talking about. If the dishwasher is next to the sink it's less likely that you'll spill things on the kitchen floor and that you'll break things as you're unloading and loading. I think good design has to be beautiful and practical. If something doesn't work it feels uncomfortable but when something really works you don't even think about it. It's just smooth and this is what all things that's designed by humans for humans should be. Mistake 10 installing a sink or hob in the kitchen island. Islands serve as a social hub of the kitchen, a place where people naturally gather around whether you are cooking or just having people around for cocktails. But if you start putting a hob or a sink in the kitchen island you're compromising on the flexibility of this space because suddenly you're taking away this beautiful huge surface. It's for a function that is quite messy and requires a lot of cleaning up. There's going to be grease, oil, boiling sauce and the openness of an island means that the splatter can go in multiple directions. Also when you have a hob you need some sort of ventilation hood and if you have one of these traditional huge ventilation hoods that's installed in the ceiling above the hob you're putting in a visual obstruction right in the middle of the room and if you have a sink they'll normally be like I don't know water splashing everywhere as you're washing stuff or just dirty dishes and cups piled in the sink. So if I ever get a chance to remodel my kitchen and create a big beautiful island I would leave it empty and if any clients come to me now and say I want to design a kitchen with a big beautiful island I would recommend them not put a hob or a sink in there. However if you already have a sink in the island you could do something about it. For example you can put a temporary sink cover in the sink so when it's not in use and then you have one flush surface and if you actually must have a hob or a stove in your kitchen island and you haven't yet installed something for ventilation I would go for a retractable or pop-up vent. This means you can have ventilation when you need it and flat counter space when you don't plus you don't have this massive ugly ventilation hood that's right up there in the ceiling. Poorly planned lighting. Bad lighting isn't just a prettiness issue. In the room where you're handling very sharp knives and hot hot objects it's also a safety concern. Kitchens are multifunctional spaces so the lighting should be too. We should all make sure that our kitchen at least have down lights for general illumination so the whole space can be lit up and we can see everything. We should also have task lighting so these can be like strip lights underneath a shelf or the cabinets so you can switch them on while you're on the counter prepping. I think having some sort of lighting in front of you is very important because when you only have light source behind you it casts a very annoying shadow on the space that's in front of you which is not great for when you want to see clearly. Like when you're handling a knife super close to your fingers. If you have family and friends who are thinking of renovating their kitchen feel free to send this video to them and if there's anything you disagree with or you think I've missed out please write in the comments and we can all expand our design knowledge together. If this video was interesting for you you might want to check out my design video about bathrooms too. Thank you for watching, see you next week. Bye!