Kitchen Islands: The Pros & Cons

• provide a staggering amount of additional storage. If designed correctly, a kitchen island will be a hub of essential and useful storage for your kitchen. Whether you choose to integrate your appliances, pull-out rubbish bins or simply create additional cupboard space for crockery, pots and pans, there is so much useful space within the island.
  
  
  Burlanes Wellsdown Kitchen in Crystal Palace. ©Sarah London Photographer.
  
  
• create an area to sit. If space allows, an overhang of worktop can create a breakfast bar area to sit and eat, chat, drink, socialise or even a spot for the children to sit and do their homework.
  
  
  Burlanes Wellsdown Kitchen In Maidstone, Kent. ©Sarah London Photographer.
  
  
• open up your kitchen to additional appliances such as a boiling water tap and prep sink, induction cooktops due to more space for venting, and pop up charging facilities for laptops, the Amazon Alexa and other smart home devices.
  
  Burlanes Decolane Kitchen In Sevenoaks, Kent. ©Sarah London Photographer.
  
  
• create a focal point and area of interest. Kitchen islands are known to be very appealing to the eye, breaking up a larger open-plan space into zones. This is very important to consider if you are planning on selling or adding value to your home. 
  
  
  Burlanes Decolane Kitchen In Essex. ©Sarah London Photographer.
  
  
• allow you to be more social when entertaining guests. By integrating your cooking space into the kitchen island, you are able to stand and cook whilst chatting and socialising. Having your back to your guests is not ideal when entertaining! 
  
  

• A kitchen island takes up a significant amount of space, and if floorspace is limited in your kitchen, it will create a huge obstacle that you will find gets in your way. If you are unsure on whether your kitchen is big enough to accommodate an island, we would recommend using masking tape to mark out where the island would be on your floor for 2 or 3 days, and see how you feel having to manoeuvre around this space all day. A great alternative to a kitchen island would be a peninsula or freestanding butcher's block.
  
  
  Burlanes Wellsdown Kitchen In Sevenoaks, Kent. ©Sarah London Photographer.
• If your kitchen island does not have a set purpose, it may disrupt your workflow and how you use your kitchen. With the kitchen being the most used used room in the home, ensure the flow, design and all elements of the room work for you.
  
  
• If your kitchen is not the right size or shape to accommodate an island, particularly a small L shaped kitchen or a galley kitchen, an island could create the illusion of the room being much smaller than it actually is.

We hope this has given you an insight into the pros and cons of an island in your kitchen, and please do get in touch if we can help with absolutely anything at all. We are incredibly proud of the unrivalled design service that we offer here at Burlanes, and our kitchen designers will work alongside you every step of your journey.

Both Burlanes Sevenoaks and Burlanes Chelmsford are open for design appointments and browsing, but we ask that you kindly call ahead to let us know you will be visiting, so we can ensure our premises remain COVID secure, safe and clean environments at all times.