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Planning storage for your kitchen – It’s what’s inside that counts
Planning and designing a new kitchen can often seem like a daunting task. Storage is an integral part, yet in a kitchen that hasn’t yet been created, it can hard to know what will work best for you. However, with our help you’ll have a space that is ergonomically satisfying as well as stunning in appearance. It’s very difficult to say how much storage an average homeowner needs, but creating an inventory of kitchen items can help determine how much and what type of storage you’ll need. As well as carefully handpicking suppliers of storage, we make many ourselves, including internal storage solutions: cutlery dividers; utensil dividers; knife blocks within drawers; drawer inserts for spice jar storage; peg boards for plates – to name but a few. Therefore we have some authoritative insights into a myriad of different storage solutions and how they can work for you. Here are a few choice storage ideas that you may not have considered, but add some of the most beneficial solutions:

APPLIANCE GARAGES
The typical home now has lots of gadgets, and the worktop is often the place people choose to keep items like toasters, food processors, microwaves and food grills, all of which eat into overall usable work space. In order to keep surfaces clutter free, an ‘appliance garage’ works well, hiding all of the necessary appliances away yet ensuring they are easily accessible and ready for use when needed.
DRAWERS
Hidden internal drawers provide easily-accessible storage, removing the need to lean right into a cupboard to reach items at the back. These are often best used for food storage. In addition, drawer space can be maximised using specialised cutlery, utensil and spice inserts which help store items in an organised and accessible manner. For example, we quite often place peg board inserts in deeper drawers located near to the dishwasher for crockery storage. These can be adjusted to suit any size or shape plate, which is an added bonus.
Likewise, deep drawers are a good solution for crockery; no longer will you have to struggle with a stack of plates stored at the back of a deep cupboard shelf. Instead you can pull out a drawer and see a whole dinner service neatly stacked.
CUPBOARDS
Cupboards often take up the majority of space in a kitchen so they definitely warrant special consideration – what looks pretty may not actually be practical or work well with the overall kitchen.
Angled corner cupboards can provide valued additional worktop and storage space, and also work very well as wall cabinets. However if additional worktop is not a requirement, magic corners or a ‘Le-mans‘ pullout storage (named Le Mans because the shape is the same as the Le Mans racetrack) are a possibility, as they look like a standard cabinet door front but there are no nasty corners to crawl inside of; instead everything in the corner comes out to you. We’ve found that ‘Le Mans’ corner solutions are most popular.
It’s also a good idea, when considering cupboards, to measure the items that will be stored in there. Wine glasses, for example, might be taller than the shelf space allows room for, so measuring in advance will enable you to alter the shelf height. You might even be able to fit in an additional shelf in some cupboards depending what you store in there.
LARDERS
Larders also provide a flexible form of storage, and are great for housing any awkward or unusual shaped items. In particular they can work well when teamed with wooden vegetable crates, pull-out wirework baskets, internal dovetailed drawers or even bottle rack/back of door storage for bottles and oils.
High quality pull-out larder systems and internal wirework drawers can also provide much valued and efficient storage for heavy items such as tins and cans. Some can even take the weight of larger items such as food processors. Our larders always tend to get a wow, with all of their drawers and tiers.
Alternatively you might like the idea of a tambour door; an up-and-over or side closing-opening door, which consists horizontal slats and “rolls” up and down, or to the side. A tambour door can be used to hide items on a work surface, or on a standalone storage unit.
Some of our most popular storage solutions are the pull out larder in tall unit and the larder pull out in a base unit.

THINK SMALL
Accessories are often overlooked but can quickly add up and take up precious real estate in your kitchen; things like lap trays and chopping blocks. We have designed an innovative way of integrating these into the kitchen design which saves a lot of space, and looks stunning as well.
In addition, if space is at a premium then pop-up storage is a neat solution, especially if there are appliances that you don’t use everyday. Pop-up shelves can create more space when needed or boxes can be mounted within the counter to hold items like knives, herbs and spices or additional power outlets.
Whatever style or size of kitchen you have, a well organised space makes a huge difference to users, and internal storage is key. Remember to start by listing the items that you want to be kept in the kitchen, and design storage solutions to fit. This way you’ll always end up with a room that will be a pleasure to use, as well as be in.