When you consider renovating your kitchen, sometimes it can be tricky to maximize innovations for your cooking space. After all, with appliances and your overall interior design to consider, just what options exist for you to make the most out of your kitchen? Interestingly, there are actually a lot of things you could do to a kitchen benchtop. And not only that—but using the right benchtop idea might be able to amplify your kitchen’s appeal.
It helps to understand that the home improvement industry has actually improved its game, especially now that it’s started to attract more millennials and first time home buyers. Did you know that millennials and home buyers actually spent an average of $40,600 and $33,800, respectively, on home improvement in 2016? Interestingly, it was kitchen and major bathroom remodels that averaged $19,100 and 11,700, respectively, in 2016.
Kitchen Benchtops: How To Make Them Work For Your Cooking Space
When you want to up the ante on your kitchen renovation, good sets of bench tops can immediately boost your cooking space’s appeal. The various designs and options available for you can make finding a new benchtop quite an exciting endeavor, and mixing and matching designs can make for quite the surprising twist for your cooking space. Here are some ideas:
- Add some fantastic lighting to accentuate details: Who said adding lighting to your kitchen was bad? If you want to make your kitchen more atmospheric, especially when it comes to making your cooking a bit more dramatic, try to add LED lighting. This helps—especially if you want to make your kitchen a much more appealing place to be for you and your family.
- Stone, granite, or marble can add that pristine and natural touch: When you use natural products such as marble, stone, or granite, you can get a kind of natural “finish” that doesn’t exist with other benchtops. Depending on the kind of finish you want, you can get specific color and veining in slab forms—which can also range from cheap slabs to very expensive and rare pieces. Marble tends to be softer and more porous, which means they can stain easily—in fact, professionals recommend a resealing every half year. On the other hand, granite is more resilient and durable. In terms of aesthetic appeal, natural stone and marble are considered very luxurious products, often coming with either brushed, flamed, honed, or polished finishes.
- Veneer or timber hardwood gives that look of nature: In speaking of natural products, veneer and timer can provide a warm finish to almost any kind of benchtop. However, hardwood benchtops for the kitchen aren’t common, as wood is prone to warping, staining, and moisture retention. While timber acts as a good highlight for breakfast bars and cabinets, timber kitchen benches are rare because of these reasons. If you want to go ahead with timber hardwood, you might want polyurethane coating that can help protect it from tear, wear, and staining.
- Engineered solid surfaces can emulate the look and feel of natural stones: If you’ve heard of materials such as Quantum Quartz, Silestone, QStone, Smartstone, or Caesarstone, they are worth checking out because of how they’re made. These are called engineered surfaces because they’re a combination of pigments and polymers mixed with ground quartz or stone. This gives them a realistic look but at the same time, their engineered nature makes them much easier to maintain. These stones also offer a more perfect and uniform finish at much cheaper rates, and at the same time offer resistance to heat, scratches, and stains.
- Stainless steel is an extremely classic and timeless look: Stainless steel remains a favorite for commercial kitchens and chefs because of its hygienic and hard wearing nature. They’re easily assembled for benchtops in large sheets and can be used as a splashback that doesn’t necessitate the need to have products to accompany it. While a common downside is its rather clinical and cold nature, stainless steel is a good choice to accentuate different colors in the kitchen.
- Concrete gives a raw feeling to your kitchen: If you want that industrial and raw finish, a concrete benchtop is the way to go. This idea might seem unappealing at first, but it has its perks. You can create a concrete benchtop by using a combination of concrete sealers to make sure it’s protected from scratches, heat damages, and stains. This is because concrete is actually a porous material. Regardless, its gray color does tend to give off a raw and eccentric vibe to your kitchen aesthetics.
The Takeaway: Utilize Benchtops For Maximum Cooking Space Uniqueness
Regardless of whether or not you consider yourself a cooking enthusiast, your kitchen is undoubtedly one of the most essential aspects of your home. Having the kitchen designed properly not only accentuates your interior design but also makes it much more fun to prepare meals for the family. Hopefully the above unique benchtop ideas can give you the kind of motivation you need to begin renovating your cooking space into something much more efficient and elegant.
