Custom kitchen basics

Creating a custom kitchen takes a lot of thought and preparation, but it can be one of the most fun and rewarding home improvement experiences. While it can be a challenge to come up with the perfect blend of beauty and practicality for your home, today's custom kitchen designs feature materials and appliances that are designed to help you find that balance.

It's important to make sure your design will be practical for you and your family. Granite countertops might not be the best choice for a family with lots of kids where the kitchen is used heavily or where large meals are often prepared. And a kitchen that is lightly used might not need a double stacked oven and miles of butcher block counters. Think about how you use your kitchen and who uses it, and you can narrow down many custom kitchen ideas into a more manageable amount right away.

If you love the look of ceramic tile, you might opt to use it on the wall behind the kitchen and in the backsplash area rather than the countertops. While a tile countertop gives a distinctive country and even old world look, it's more high maintenance than a solid surface counter because of the grout lines. But a tiled wall or backslash adds the charm of the look without the extra cleaning time.

Avoid countertops that will have seams, if it all possible. These are very affordable, but the seams are noticeable and are prime places for dirt and bacteria to settle, and sometimes as things settle the seams expand a little making them even more noticeable. Go for a solid surface countertop like a corian, both for beauty and easy maintenance in your custom designed kitchen.

While countertop choice is important in custom kitchen designs, as are the sink, appliances, and storage cabinets, something you need to give a lot of thought to is the lighting. You need general lighting in a kitchen to illuminate the room, of course, but a custom kitchen will need more light sources. You may need a light over the sink designed to light up that whole area, and lights beneath the upper cabinets to serve as task lighting for when you're preparing food on the countertops.

If you plan your custom kitchen as an eat-in kitchen, you may want separate lighting over this area that may have a softer glow than the rest of the room. Often, lighting gets ignored until the last minute, but in a room like the kitchen it should be one of the first things you consider.

A custom designed kitchen also gives you a broad choice in flooring materials. What you choose needs to coordinate with the rest of the room, but you still have a lot of leeway because of the many different materials available today like wood-look laminate flooring. Vinyl tile is inexpensive and in a broad range of designs and colors, so if you've used much of your custom kitchen budget on other things you still don't have to settle for a ho-hum floor.

Interested in remodeling your kitchen? Get your project started by submitting a free BuyerZone request for kitchen remodeling price quotes.