Out of all the spaces that comprise a home, kitchens stand out for how much time an owner spends living and working there. Yet homeowners and homebuyers don’t give attention to safety and functionality.
MARCH 24, 2023
Out of all the spaces that comprise a home, kitchens stand out for how much time an owner spends living and working there. Yet homeowners and homebuyers typically give inordinate attention to aesthetic characteristics of kitchens that have little to do with how safe and functional that space will prove to be in coming time.
“Kitchens get lots of interest for their eye appeal,” says Louie Delaware, president and co-founder of the Living in Place Institute, training homebuilding and remodeling professionals to create homes that will sustain their dwellers as they age and as their capabilities change. “But as in other parts of a home, design aspects that will prove to be super important in coming years tend to get less attention compared to surface attractions that are often the focus of marketing.”
Kitchen designer offers insights on Idea Home
Certified Master Kitchen-and-Bath Designer Maria Stapperfenne, a recognized expert on designing for living-in-place, is currently at work designing the kitchen for the Institute’s Idea Home, which is set to begin construction in Louisville, Colo., early this year. “When laying out a kitchen, buyers need to be conscious not only of their own needs, but also for those of family, guests and others that will be using that kitchen in coming years,” she says.
“Kitchens are not hidden behind closed doors anymore but have become part of the visible living space where people gather,” adds Stapperfenne. That extra attention and the budget considerations required will pay off greatly as homeowners age, she adds. But users often have little appreciation for what it costs to make a kitchen sustainable for long periods.
“People expect to have a kitchen last 25 to 40 years,” says Stapperfenne. “That’s around twice as long as their next two vehicles will be expected to last, but they’re hoping to pay half as much for it and will work it twice as hard.”
What sets accessible kitchens apart
Here are some special considerations that are being worked into the Idea Homes’ kitchen, to allow it to perform sustainably over years to come:
Traffic flow. Buyers need to consider real situations of kitchen traffic flow and how those are impacted by appliances, drawers and cabinets, says Stapperfenne. A functional design requires imagining how the worst-case scenario when others are competing for the same workspace.
Drawers and cabinets. Cabinet makers are offering design choices that give users much better access as their needs change, or as unexpected health challenges arrive.
“I tell clients that their most-used items need to be stored between the eyes and the thighs,” she Stapperfenne says. “If they’re stored higher than eyes, you have to reach for it, and if it’s lower than the thighs you have to bend for it.”
“Pulldowns and slide-out shelves allow the contents to come into the light and into the viewers eye, with minimum exertion,” she adds, noting that vision challenges are a major issue as homeowners age.
In the Idea Home, Stapperfenne will specify shelving units from Rev-A-Shelf, offering pulldowns and drawer organizers to make things more easily accessible. That might be a wall cabinet with a pull-down shelf that reveals the equivalent of two or three shelves of cans or cookware, before retracting up and out of the way.
Choose appliances carefully
Fixtures and appliances. Stapperfenne will also reach for a novel design of kitchen faucet by Brizo that can activate with touch rather than needing to be turned on and off and that will pour specified amounts without needing to be shut off by the user. Other designs offer visible cues to water temperature, to indicate whether water is hot.
Meanwhile, Signature Kitchen Suites is providing a new design of induction cooktop that greatly reduces the danger of fire and injury that users with impairments might face with conventional gas or electric cooktops. “They’re wonderful,” says Stapperfenne. “They electromagnetically heat the food in the cooking vessel cookware; you can actually touch the heating surface almost immediately after cooking, and all heat gets used.”
Positioning the dishwasher. Counters should have varying heights to allow for varying capabilities of users to work and cook. Stapperfenne, who serves as a Living in Place ambassador in New Jersey where she consults from Tewksbury Kitchen & Bath, opens clients’ dishwashers and pulls out the racks to create an example.
“Around 80% of the contents will be items they unload every single time,” she notes. Raising the dishwasher greatly enables it to function more ergonomically, closer to where the cleaned items are stored. If clients already have a difficult time bending, Stapperfenne will recommend two separate drawer units washers—one on either side of the sink.
Materials make a difference
Selections of tiles and countertops is typically an eye-appeal issue, but can greatly affect functionality as vision problems arrive, says Stapperfenne. “Lower sheen counters with a matte finish will prevent glare from under cabinet lighting, an effect that some users find to be blinding,” she notes. In like manner, maintenance tasks become a bigger hassle as people face physical challenges. “Concrete counters look lovely,” Stapperfenne says, “but most are porous, and you don’t want to be a slave to having to reseal them regularly.
Stapperfenne says that the extra consideration given to kitchen design will prove immensely valuable as users age and encounter new living situations. “My favorite compliment is when a client goes on vacation and realize that things aren’t set up the way they are at home; that they’re doing more running around.”