Sat 11 May 2024
@ Contact us
Your newsletters
Talk about moving the goal posts: Jennifer Lopez has casually revealed in a video that she has not one kitchen island in her Bel Air mansion, but TWO. They’re white and they stand parallel to each other, science lab-style. Does this make her kitchen twice as good as everyone else’s or is she a double cliché?
Every kitchen has a marble-topped island these days, with a soft close cutlery drawer and a row of stools; they’re a status symbol, a sign that the house has been “done”.
Mine arrived last year when we removed a wall down the middle of our kitchen in a bid to have a roomier and more social living space, a cliché in itself. I tried so hard to avoid all the stereotype island tropes: the three industrial-style pendant lights hanging over it (I have just one – it’s rattan), the expanse of pale marble (mine is oak with an inset marble slab) and the gimmicky bookshelves and wine racks (it’s just cupboards and drawers). I even painted it bright red rather than deep blue or racing green as per the islands seen on Farrow and Ball’s website and I found plain wooden stools on Etsy and painted them myself. We love it. There is so much storage that we haven’t filled the cupboards and the children keep out of my way on the stools.
It does make me wince that my kitchen looks just like everyone else’s. I wonder if I should have been braver. I could have gone crazy and put a dining table down the middle instead. Indeed, just as I’ve begun my island lifestyle, the signs are everywhere that they’re now passé. The huge matchy-matchy kitchens with Corian-topped islands that have been installed in millions of kitchen extensions across the UK are falling out of fashion, according to reports. Old fashioned 1970s-style galley kitchens and mid-century L shape rooms with simple country style tables are now trending on Instagram. I’m astonished that the interior designer Nicky Haslam, who has a galley kitchen at his flat in London, hasn’t added kitchen islands to his list of things he finds common.
If we’d used our kitchen table as the island, we’d have saved a fortune and had more space at the end of the room for a sofa. “It can be good to have breathing space in a kitchen,” agrees interior designer Nicky Vale of Les Sardines.co.uk.
Mumsnet is filled with reports of homeowners ridding their kitchens of islands. “First thing I did in our new house was to get the island unit ripped out,” comments one user. “Bloody stupid things unless you have a barn-sized kitchen.”
Vale agrees that they don’t necessarily make for the best layout. We got so hung up on having a massive island that we didn’t stop to consider what works best for the space and our lifestyles. We make them too big and dominating – David Beckham’s Cotswolds kitchen island appears to take up his whole kitchen, which must be a pain to traipse around whenever you want something on the other side of the room. “Kitchen companies oversell the length and the width, which means they end up out of proportion,” Vale explains.
Homeowners are realising that live-in kitchens aren’t always worth knocking down walls for. Interior designer Max Buxton of Max Buxton Design finds that the L-shape kitchen can be more efficient in smaller rooms, with the cooker, fridge and sink areas in the classic triangle formation. He also believes there is a place for galley kitchens, particularly for shy cooks who prefer to prepare meals in private away from their guests. “Homeowners are prioritising functionality over large, open layouts – galleys make the most of the available space and are great for storage,” agrees Victor Meus of Studio VM Design, who has also installed several galley kitchens recently.
Yet Nicky Vale stands firm that a well-designed island is nothing to cringe about. For a busy family with enough space, they’re the only answer, she says. “They’re great for people who want to be together but not in each other’s way,” she explains. An island provides a natural buffer zone for the chef and somewhere for guests to congregate.
However, there are strict rules to adhere to in the design process. An island should never be longer than the run of units behind it nor wider than a unit-and-a-half, and there should be a 100cm gap between it and the units behind, Vale says. “In my experience, 60cm wide with a 30cm overhang is perfect.”
I shied away from installing a sink or hob in my island, fearing it would end up covered in washing up or hot saucepans, yet Vale believes both can work well. A double sink will give you somewhere to dry your washing up other than the draining board, she says, and if you have an induction hob, she suggests installing a Bora fan in the island to avoid an overhead extractor. “If you don’t have a sink or hob, which requires you to constantly put things away and wipe down the surface, the island becomes a table – and tables become dumping grounds,” she adds.
This is definitely the case with mine. It starts the day clear but by the time I cook supper it will be covered in homework, books, water bottles, mail, random pens, toys and charging devices. If I’m lucky, my husband will have left a bag of dog food on it, too. Vale believes you have to plan for this: she suggests installing USB points in drawers to remove the devices and designate cupboards for items your children use every day, such as stationery and Tupperware. I’ve resorted to keeping a shallow basket at one end for all the miscellany that builds up on it.
An island is still a thousand times more practical than a dining table, she insists. Sure, my kitchen might look more World of Interiors if I’d used a table instead, but my back would ache as I bent over to prep food and there would be nowhere to put hot dishes when they came out of the oven. Plus people would always be in my way when I was trying to get into the dishwasher. “With a table in the middle of a room, there’s no natural place to stand,” she says.
So islands are a cliché for a reason – they work. But one is enough, Vale insists. No need for a J-Lo-style archipelago.
All rights reserved. © 2021 Associated Newspapers Limited.
