Why the kitchen is the most important part of your home

Posted on Monday, July 9th, 2018

Historically, a home’s kitchen has served a single, simple purpose: providing a dedicated space for cooking. However, as years have passed, the needs and preferences of homeowners have evolved – and the routine uses of a kitchen with them.

As a result, whereas kitchens were once deemed merely utilitarian, they have since become more communal spaces in which both the home’s residents and visitors may choose to congregate. Below, we detail good reasons why, today, a kitchen can often be considered a home’s main attraction.

Home lifestyles have changed over time

Of course, cooking is an activity that can generate a lot of mess, but you would not want many people to clearly see that mess before it is cleared up. When this is taken into account, you can understand why homeowners of times past liked their kitchens to be both small and relatively isolated.

If you buy a period property today, you might still see such a kitchen. However, your thoughts could soon turn to renovating or expanding it, as this part of the home could often seem too cramped or poorly-equipped for the purposes to which you would like to put it.

Has the kitchen become the new living room?

One longstanding tradition of residential life has been making food in the kitchen but eating it in a separate dining or living space. However, this was back in the age of the “family meal”, which holds much less sway in the current generation due to our significantly busier lifestyles.

So, whereas the family might have traditionally met up in the dining room come the day’s end, they might now prefer to eat their food sooner after making it. Freshome notes that kitchens have changed to feature large tables and islands letting people easily both enter and leave the space.

How might you tinker with your kitchen in the future?

Improving your kitchen now could pay dividends for when you later decide to sell your home. Ideal Home reports the estimation that a new kitchen could improve the average property’s value by 4% to 7%. However, you might feel that smaller-scale changes could suffice for your current kitchen.

You might, for example, favour adding new paint, accessories and appliances to your kitchen as a way of helping to increase the chances of a sale.