5 Kitchen Style Suggestions From an Inside Designer Who Has Designed More than 500

Ask inside designer Caren Rideau how a lot of kitchens she’s renovated in her job and you are going to be greeted with a significant chortle. “In my life time? Oh, my gosh,” she says. “I’ve been accomplishing this for more than 30 several years.” Her estimate: extra than 500. “Everybody comes to me to make magic in the kitchen.” She’s the founder of Los Angeles–based Kitchen Layout Group operates a winery in the Santa Ynez Valley with winemaker Andrés Ibarra and just debuted a new book, Caren Rideau: Kitchen area Designer, Vintner, Entertaining at Residence.

“Everybody” contains us. We questioned Rideau to permit us in on a number of of her kitchen structure secrets—must-haves she incorporates into most of her initiatives to double down on operation and effectiveness. Some are so straightforward you are going to ponder why you did not think of them 1st. (It is ok, you possibly have not introduced hundreds of kitchens to life—yet.)

Food-Prep Necessities

You really don’t automatically have to do a demo to develop more respiratory room—just distinct away visual litter. “I just take knife blocks and spices off the countertop and conceal them in [customized] drawers,” Rideau says. “Then there’s a place for all of these items—and they are not getting up place.”

Small Appliances

An equipment center is central to quite a few of Rideau’s kitchens. A what? “They seem like tall storage with pocket doorways,” she describes. When they are shut, you’d in no way guess the blender, toaster, or gradual cooker are inside these types of easy access. Yours can also double as a 1-quit coffee bar, storing a Nespresso device, coffee grinder, and the like. If you adore to host, the prospects increase even even more in this room, Rideau put in a warming drawer beneath so dishes can stay hidden—and hot—until their dinnertime debut.

Major Appliances

Imagine it now: You go as a result of all the hard work (and time and dollars) of picking out the correct ideal countertop and cupboard colour, but your eye nonetheless catches on the stainless steel fridge. Not in Ridaeu’s projects. “I love to conceal the dishwasher and fridge—any large appliance—with cupboard doors so that you really do not truly know they are appliances,” she suggests. In truth, protected in paneling and a duo of brass straps, the kinds in this kitchen Rideau intended look far more like stand-by yourself household furniture. 

Slicing Boards

We’ve all been there, awkwardly yanking a cutting board out of a also-whole cabinet. Rideau’s alternative: built-in variations, possibly concealed or on exhibit. Selection just one: “You pull a drawer open to uncover a chopping board,” she clarifies. Give it a wash as soon as you’re finished chopping, then slide it back into area. Alternative two: a sink with a built-in lip about the perimeter to hold a reducing board aloft (and a colander, if you insert a second ledge). Clean, slice, and go.