With these proven ideas, you won’t have to cook up your own original kitchen layout just to get more space!
Whether you’re a master chef with a larder full of spices and herbs or an easygoing home cook who only has eggs in his fridge, the kitchen is an indispensable space if you prepare any sort of food at home. Plus, it’s where all your appliances and utensils are stored, so it’s key to have sufficient (or even extra) space on the inside.
Luckily, there are tried-and-tested ways to change up your kitchen’s layout so that there’s enough room for everything. Keep scrolling to see how to pull them off for your HDB flat renovation!
1. Have the entrance fully hacked away
View this project by Urban Home Design 二本設計家
It might leave your kitchen entirely exposed, but if you’d like your food prep areas to feel extra-spacious, doing away with the entryway and partition walls is the way to go.
Aside from ensuring better traffic flow between different zones (e.g. from the serving counter to the dining area), it could also give you the space you need to build a longer L-shaped storage unit that’ll upgrade your kitchen’s storage capacity minus any worries about cramped walkways.
View this project by U-Home Interior Design
One thing to note, however, is that if the entrance to your home’s household shelter is located within the kitchen, it’ll still be in the way of your (planned) L-shaped counter even after performing a full entrance hack.
Nonetheless, such a layout change can still prove to be worth it if extra space is what you’re primarily interested in.
2. Adding an island/breakfast counter/dining table
View this project by Swiss Interior Design
Creating more space in an HDB flat kitchen doesn’t just entail making it roomier, it’s also about getting more functionality out of it with useful spaces. Having a peninsula built between the bounds of your kitchen is one way to accomplish this, regardless of whether you plan to use it as a prep island, breakfast counter or dining table.
View this project by Yang's Inspiration Design
Making this layout change of course requires the original exterior of your kitchen to be demolished, but if you’d like to maintain some degree of separation between the stove and the rest of the flat, you can add a set of sliding windows. When things get hot and steamy, keep these flexible fixtures shut, and once you’re done, open them up to air out your kitchen.
3. Creating dedicated wet and dry kitchen zones
View this project by Notion of W
Taking the design approach of splitting your kitchen into wet and dry areas works especially well for homes that want flexible spaces. Plus, it can potentially do two things for your HDB flat: one, maximise available space, and two, solve an awkward layout.
A Jurong 5-room HDB flat’s floor plan, pre-renovation.
The post-renovation floor plan of the same 5-room HDB flat in Jurong. Note the changes made to the kitchen’s layout.
While doing away with its exterior walls definitely benefited this Jurong 5-room HDB flat and its kitchen spatially (on top of getting rid of its awkwardly-positioned entrance facing the study), splitting it into wet and dry sections also gives its owners two distinct food prep zones that don’t get in the way of each other.
It’s worth mentioning as well that this layout change allows bulky appliances – specifically, the fridge – to be placed in a convenient location while leaving enough room inside the wet area for free movement.
4. Combine your service yard and kitchen
View this project by Parallelogram Design
The before (left) and after (right) floor plans of this Bidadari Park Drive HDB flat.
Service yards in HDB flats are typically used for laundry and storage purposes, but if you’d like a more spacious kitchen, there’s the option of merging both home zones together.
Naturally, this gets you the square footage necessary for longer counters and cabinets, but there’s the benefit of improving the visual flow between the yard and kitchen as well.
View this project by Carpenter Direct
And then there’s the alternative of doing away with the (usual) sliding doors segregating the kitchen and service yard, but still keeping the small sections of partition wall between them.
Do this if you want to get the best of both worlds, or more specifically, separate spaces, but with a greater feeling of spaciousness!
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