How to make a budget kitchen look expensive

[Kr1st1na]

DD has just bought her first flat and it needs a new kitchen. Limited budget means one from Ikea / Howdens etc. Any tips for making it look a little more stylish ?

I’ve looked on Pinterest etc and it’s full of helpful suggestions like

Install a marble workshop
Fit designer taps and appliances
Here’s this lovely custom made glass splash back at only £100m2
Buy handcrafted doors and hardware from superfront

Sadly she doesn’t have that kind of money. So low to moderate costs ideas please .

Most appreciative of all your posts.

We will avoid open shelves - I know they can look lovely but DD needs the storage space of units as she will have flatmates. Plus she’s fussy about tidiness and they would just become a source of stress.

I think she will need more storage space for food than a 3 person family ( based on her flat sharing experience ) .

DD likes the sound of light units and mid to dark grey floor ( as several of you have suggested ) . And I think it will be laminate all the way on floors and worktops ( unless the budget stretches to earthstone).

Have been checking out gumtree for ex display kitchens. Vaguely amused at the people trying to sell off their 20 year old bog standard timber kitchens for hundreds.

it means that readily-available doors and drawers from other suppliers won't fit.

I can't guess if that was the objective.

Got for matt laminate they look and last better

I have wood, but it's only me using the kitchen. For me it was a no brained as made the kitchen look much more expensive. (Combined with wooden handles). I use a glass mat next to cooker and under the kettle so it's been fitted 15 months now and hasn't needed re-oiling. However, persuading friends to treat it well enough would probably send me mad.

I think she will need more storage space for food than a 3 person family ( based on her flat sharing experience

Yup - everyone has their own bread, own milk, stuff in the freezer etc. It was always super tight for food/kitchen space when I had 2 housemates.

I don’t know if this has been mentioned already but, a warning about IKEA kitchen cabinets:

Positives:

• They are as strong and versatile as expensive cabinets but as cheap as the lower end ones.
• They are much deeper so much more capacity.

Negatives:
-They are designed for tall people, the wall cabinets are deep enough for you to require a stool to reach stuff in the middle shelf even if you are tall.

• since they are so deep, there is no space to hide pipework behind them, which means all the pipework needs to be moved down to floor level making the installation much more expensive.

On the Ikea depth thing: there are two depths, 37cm and 60cm. You can get around the problem by putting a run of shallower wall cupboards, with things you use very often underneath a run of deeper ones with things that you use less often. This kitchen on Pinterest does something similar.

The depth becomes an advantage on lower-level units because you can have drawers that pull out the whole way, which means no lost spider-infested space at the back of cupboards!

That's a gorgeous kitchen!!

The point is about compatability with other non-ikea kitchens - i think the 60cm depth you've quoted whisky is the frame (cupboard) depth - when you add the door to the cupboard (so the assembled depth) it's 61.something - most UK kitchens are just less than 60cm so 'standard' off the shelf (non) IKEA work tops (which are just over 60cm) won't be deep enough for Ikea cupboards. You can get deeper work tops from some places - and of course Ikea - it just means shopping around.

Yes, you're absolutely right namechanged - sorry, was replying to notsure with the above!

I had to ring my local IKEA kitchen fitting team recently, and they explained that the depth is partly due to the fitting system - you have 60cm deep cupboards on rails that protrude about a centimetre or so (enough to get an electric cable down the back), so the worktops end up being 63cm.

Sorry to derail but I have an Ikea Metis kitchen with standard appliances. Is fine.

Metod, not Metis.

If Ikea base units are deeper than the UK standard, surely 600mm wide apppliances WILL be ok ? As long as you don’t push them all the way back to the wall.

Or am I missing something ?

The best thing she can do is keep it clean and tidy. Other than that, why the need to make it look expensive?

Because she wants her kitchen to look nice ! I didn’t think that would be controversial or confuse people . Surely young women are allowed to care about their house too ? Do you have to be a certain age to want a nice house ?

Surely shes allowed to aspire to more than “ clean and tidy “ ? Can’t she also want stylish and well designed , with enough space for all her needs and a look that reflects her personality ?

Finding this really interesting as I am hoping to have a new kitchen early next year and will be going with ikea plus hopefully fired earth tiles in the sales/from the outlet.
What are people's thoughts on colour for it to not date too soon?
OP if your DD likes grey, we got some grey floor tiles at Topps tiles and they were on offer so very cheap. They are similar to this and I bet they have offers coming up after Christmas. Of course it depends on the size of the floor etc as ours is a small kitchen so wasn't too expensive.
www.toppstiles.co.uk/range623/page1/tekno

I second looking on eBay etc, some people will buy a house and rip out a decent modern kitchen if it's not to their taste. If she goes for basic units I would say a few stylish feature tiles mixed in with basic ones could make it look more individual.

Thanks for the link mortigua , I think that a mid grey colour flooring with some kind of subtle pattern / shading like these tiles is the way to go. Then kitchen is quite small so she doesn’t want to go too dark but still wants something to set off the light units. Which I suspect will be white or pale grey - she doesn’t like wood effect.

When she lived at home we thought she was a bit of a messsy slob. But since she’s been sharing with housemates she’s become a LOT more fussy. So I’m trying to avoid anything high maintenance in the kitchen - high gloss doors, light plain flooring , wooden worktops, open shelving ,anything that needs polished to look good.

I’m wondering if stainless steel splashbacks are hard to clean ? And a PP ( maybe @billysboy) mentioned stainless steel worktops .

Yes they are easy to maintain as they don't show much dirt. My DH is the same and so for the same reasons I think we won't go with high gloss! We have light flooring in the dining room and it always looks messy.

We had small cream floor tiles ( with dark grout ) in the kitchen in our old house and they never ever looked clean. I have no idea what possessed the previous owners to install them .

However another house had large limestone tiles which were still light coloured but had a lot of pattern and they were very easy to keep clean. The larger tiles meant less grout and it was putty coloured, same as the tiles, so the area looked bigger. They were very smooth and the muddy footprints would just dry up and you could sweep them with a brush .

So i know it’s not as simple as light is hard to keep clean and dark is easy.

< waits for the cleaning Police to come along and say that they wash their kitchen floor twice a day so it’s not a problem >

Following

Beware of buying a second-hand granite worktop. I did, and then found the floor cabinets would have to be reinforced to take the weight, and that a specialist granite company (not the kitchen fitter) would have to trim/polish them to the exact dimensions I needed. All costing £££ in the thousands. I ended up ditching them completely!