Extending Your Kitchen’s Functionality to Host a Party

It’s undoubtedly quite the challenge designing a kitchen that has the ability to live out a double life, serving as an ordinary kitchen for everyday family life throughout most of the year while also being able to accommodate all the extra food, guests and fun that comes with family celebrations.

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If you need to spruce things up a bit around the kitchen so that everything falls in line with the annual Christmas cheer and everything to go with it, it’s perhaps a great time to speak to some designers about it. Making the very best of the space you have available to you, to achieve many different functions really just comes down to intelligent design and that’s exactly what some experienced experts bring to the table.

Shaker kitchen designers, Harvey Jones, has some top tips for a kitchen that’s perfectly suited to handle a party that can be hosted any time of the year really:

  1. Create a Gathering Point by Adding an Island or Peninsula

When the script flips and something like a buffet station fit for all the festivities is required of your kitchen space, an existing structure such as a homework station or breakfast bar can be easily transformed into exactly that. Typically that’s a surface which offers easy access to the kitchen’s core from the outside and this can be complemented with the addition of an overhang worktop to the island or peninsula, opening up some good additional space for barstools to be added underneath.

  1. Add a Drinks Station

On a cosmetic level, a regular, functional kitchen space can be transformed into one, fit to host a party by simply removing appliances such as the toaster, removing breakfast china and cereals and then replacing all of this with snacks, cocktail makers and glasses, while from a design point of view a drinking station can be created with the use of double-door breakfast stations or tambour-fronted ones. Keep the blender plugged in though so that the crushed ice that goes into smoothies can be readied in no time. Portable ice makers are brilliant where power supplies will be limited.

  1. Make Provision for Plenty of Seating Places

Since the kitchen naturally always just has a that magnetic factor which makes it a watering hole and re-fuelling station during parties, it has to have plenty of room to sit in. Extra chairs which can be stored away easily make for a great in-built kitchen design to consider if you’re still in the early stages of a new kitchen design.

  1. Make the temperature comfortable for your guests

When hosting in the kitchen, it’s often the case that the room gets warm very quickly due to a number of things including the preparing of food, cooking, and general volume of guests. Making sure the kitchen is the right temperature for your guests to enjoy sitting in is crucial to keeping your party afloat. Researching on websites such as tsshomecomfort.com/ac-services-in-caldwell/ will allow you to look into installing air conditioning to give your kitchen the right temperature to keep your guests cool and comfortable. Alternatively, if your air conditioning needs a bit of attention, you can check out a company similar to Sirius Plumbing and Air Conditioning to come and repair or replace your appliance for you. You don’t want to impress your guests with the expectation of air conditioning to find it doesn’t work! Make sure to be prepared. If air conditioning isn’t for you or your kitchen style, make sure to place your seating close to windows to allow the air to flow through the room throughout your party.

  1. Bring out the Lighting

If there is one thing that never fails in accounting for the difference between an ordinary day and a day of celebration, it’s definitely the lighting. The good news is that there are so many different styles of lighting to choose from that you are spoilt for choice. From neon lighting (that you can get from somewhere like the Neon Mama shop) to overhead lighting and LED lighting, you really can choose from anything. As such, the lighting has to be considered as part of your initial kitchen design process, making provisions for the easy extension of the existing lighting functionality to cater to a more festive setting. Also, color-changing LED strips along with spots under peninsula surfaces, inside cupboards, and behind splashback will add that little bit of extra wow factor as soon as the party season comes around again.

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