Designing Your New Kitchen: Refining Your Design

Line, Scale, and Shape

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The lines, shapes, and scale of kitchen elements create the design’s basic foundation.

North Wall: The shape of large-scale elements set the design theme. Small-scale elements carry out the large-scale effect.; South Wall: Rectangular shapes of similar pro portions are repeated., Whenever possible, horizontal and vertical lines are carried through.

Refining a design—tying it together—is confusing to many people, but it needn’t be. Like other stages of de sign, there are no hard and fast rules, but there are some basic guidelines. As you could see when you started sketching in storage units, your plan looks very different in elevation than in layout, and these sketches are very helpful at this point. Because cabinets and colors are so dominant in a kitchen, there’s a tendency to choose these first and then make all other material selections. There’s nothing wrong with this, but other important de sign elements can easily get lost along the way. Since most kitchens are inherently busy places, you want to achieve a state of balance in your design, and you can do this best with line, shape, pattern, texture, and contrast. These elements all work together to counter balance any problems in your kitchen’s shape and size, and give the room its overall tone. You can use your elevation sketches as tools for creating balance and harmony, and then choose a cabinet style and colors to support and highlight the foundation you’ve laid. Read through the simple guidelines outlined below and look at the illustrations. Then look again at the photographs in Section Two with some of these principles in mind. You’ll be able to see that this part of the design process does in fact have some logic to it.

Line. Place a sheet of tracing paper over one of your elevation sketches. Look at the vertical lines—doors, windows, refrigerator, wall ovens, range, pantry units, and cabinets above and below the appliances. They don’t all have to be precisely aligned, but are there places where adding a few inches to the width of an upper cabinet would make it align with the edge of the sink or range? Look for places where vertical alignments would smooth out the lines in your kitchen without creating functional problems.

Look at the horizontal lines created by your floor, counter surfaces, upper cabinets, appliances, doors, and windows. Do they flow or do they jump all over the place? If they jump around and look a bit choppy, sketch some new lines. Even if you won’t be able to reach high shelves, you may want to take the cabinets up to the ceiling simply because they look better that way. If you don’t want your cabinets to extend to the ceiling, perhaps you can align them with the top of doors or windows. If you want shorter cabinets above the sink and range, make them both the same height. If you’re thinking about installing a tile backsplash, consider the line created by the top row. Perhaps you can tie that line in with some other element in the kitchen or decide to run the tiles all the way up to the upper cabinet instead. When you’re deciding where to install your wall oven, consider tying the top of it in with the base line of the upper cabinets or the bottom of it in with the counter-top line. Play around with your elevation sketches until the horizontal lines seem smooth and integrated.

When you’re considering the type of cabinet style you want, bear in mind that the lines of these cabinet fronts create a visual effect. Horizontal slats on cabinet doors, for example, will elongate the kitchen, whereas vertical slats will draw the eye up.

Scale. Your kitchen has a certain scale, and the structural and individual elements within it will look best if they harmonize with that overall scale. If, for example, you have a very small kitchen, you may want to avoid expanses of closed cabinets or you may want to enlarge a window to increase the room’s visual size, Look at the large-scale items in your kitchen—doors and windows, refrigerator, freezer, pass-through to another room, or an uninterrupted bank of cabinets. Are they in line with the overall size of the room or do they overpower the space? Then look at the small-scale elements. Do they harmonize with the large-scale elements? Are they of similar shapes?

Shape. Continuity in shape also lends harmony to your design, and you’ll want to bear, this in mind when you think about islands, peninsulas, windows, pass-throughs, tables, cabinet doors, and so on. This does not mean everything in your kitchen should be rectangular. for in stance, but you’ll want to avoid the jumbled effect created by a combination of too many shapes—large square windows, vertical upper cabinets, square base cabinets, arched doorways, carved soffit trim, a round table, and so on. Color in the various shapes you’ve created in your design to see whether or not they seem harmonious. It you’ve introduced an odd shape somewhere, you may want to repeat it elsewhere to tie the scheme together.

Contrast. Without thinking about color, try out some light/dark contrasts on your elevation sketches. Light walls with dark cabinetry create one effect and dark walls with light cabinetry create a completely different one. Dark, horizontal surfaces against light, vertical surfaces and vice versa create yet two more variations. By trying out different combinations on your sketches, you’ll see the striking differences they make, and you may discover that you have definite preferences. You may even decide that you want very little contrast in your kitchen.

Pattern and texture. Patterns have a certain texture, and textures often create patterns of their own. There fore, these two elements can be considered together. Pattern does not necessarily mean a floral or geometric print—it is any repeated shape and includes the overall lines in your kitchen as well as things as subtle as wood grain. The chaos of too many patterns in a room may seem very obvious, but even all-white tiles have a grid pattern, which should be considered when choosing other elements. If you have a very high ceiling in your kitchen, a vertical, striped wallpaper pattern will over emphasize that height whereas a small print or grid pat tern may diffuse it. Glossy and matte surfaces are both smooth, but because one is bright and the other is soft, each affects the feeling of texture in your kitchen differently. Try sketching patterns on your floor plans and elevations. Look at the textures and finishes used in other kitchens you like. Look for combinations that carry out the feeling you want.

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Contrast, Pattern, and Texture: Patterns, textures, and light and dark contrasts are used to support and highlight the design theme.

A dark or bold colored element tends to come forward when contrasted with a light one.

Overuse of patterns and textures creates chaos, but patterned accessories might enliven a simple design.