5 Kitchen Design and style Concepts From an Interior Designer Who Has Made In excess of 500

Check with interior designer Caren Rideau how numerous kitchens she’s renovated in her vocation and you are going to be greeted with a big laugh. “In my life time? Oh, my gosh,” she says. “I’ve been undertaking this for more than 30 many years.” Her estimate: much more than 500. “Everybody arrives to me to make magic in the kitchen.” She’s the founder of Los Angeles–based Kitchen area Design Team runs a vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley with winemaker Andrés Ibarra and just debuted a new e book, Caren Rideau: Kitchen area Designer, Vintner, Entertaining at Home.

“Everybody” incorporates us. We questioned Rideau to enable us in on a number of of her kitchen area design and style secrets—must-haves she incorporates into most of her assignments to double down on features and effectiveness. Some are so basic you’ll question why you didn’t believe of them first. (It is alright, you in all probability have not brought hundreds of kitchens to life—yet.)

Meal-Prep Necessities

You really don’t essentially have to do a demo to make far more respiratory room—just distinct away visual clutter. “I acquire knife blocks and spices off the countertop and conceal them in [customized] drawers,” Rideau suggests. “Then there’s a place for all of these items—and they are not taking up space.”

Little Appliances

An equipment center is central to many of Rideau’s kitchens. A what? “They search like tall storage with pocket doorways,” she clarifies. When they are closed, you’d in no way guess the blender, toaster, or slow cooker are in just such straightforward arrive at. Yours can also double as a one-end coffee bar, storing a Nespresso equipment, coffee grinder, and the like. If you enjoy to host, the prospects grow even further in this house, Rideau put in a warming drawer beneath so dishes can continue to be hidden—and hot—until their dinnertime debut.

Big Appliances

Envision it now: You go as a result of all the hard work (and time and funds) of deciding upon the exact appropriate countertop and cabinet shade, but your eye nonetheless catches on the stainless steel fridge. Not in Ridaeu’s initiatives. “I love to conceal the dishwasher and fridge—any huge appliance—with cupboard doorways so that you never really know they are appliances,” she says. In reality, lined in paneling and a duo of brass straps, the kinds in this kitchen Rideau designed appear extra like stand-by itself home furnishings. 

Reducing Boards

We have all been there, awkwardly yanking a reducing board out of a far too-comprehensive cabinet. Rideau’s answer: integrated variations, possibly concealed or on screen. Solution 1: “You pull a drawer open up to obtain a slicing board,” she points out. Give it a clean at the time you’re performed chopping, then slide it back into place. Choice two: a sink with a created-in lip all-around the perimeter to keep a reducing board aloft (and a colander, if you include a 2nd ledge). Wash, slice, and go.