The modern kitchen isn’t just a place to cook and prepare food, it’s often where friends and family gather, whether relaxing with a cup of tea or catching up over a glass of wine. As a social hub, making sure you have enough seating in your kitchen is crucial to the functionality of your design, and the style of seating you choose can play an important role in setting the tone of your new space. To give you some inspiration on how you can incorporate seating into your kitchen, we’ve put together this helpful guide to share with you some of the latest, most exciting new design ideas.
Bringing a spacious and sociable feel to the heart of your home, these days open-plan kitchen diners and living spaces are a very popular choice. If you’d love to incorporate a dining area into your kitchen but are concerned about space, then built-in banquette seating could be the ideal solution. Usually built against a wall, banquette or bench seats allow you to position your dining table that bit closer to the edge of your space. They can also provide handy extra storage all while establishing a stylish and luxurious atmosphere. Banquette seats present a wonderful opportunity to get creative with your colour scheme, consider pairing contrasting fabrics to add a characterful bespoke touch to your interior. Offering stylish good looks and fantastic additional storage, banquette seats are a wonderful option for any kitchen.
Often situated at the back of your property leading onto an outdoor space, your kitchen is an ideal place to create a spot for quiet contemplation. Away from the hubbub of the rest of your home, a cosy nook looking out into your garden is the perfect location to tuck a stylish bench seat. From offering cleverly hidden storage to providing somewhere for the kids to do homework, a kitchen bench seat offers great multifunctional potential. Whether you’re looking to maximise unused space or you’d simply like a comfy spot to finish the crossword while dinner cooks in the oven, a window bench is a great way to bring a relaxed feel to your kitchen.
Depending on where your kitchen is situated within your home, you may wish to incorporate an adjoining boot room or utility. A quirky and attractive traditional cloakroom bench seat needn’t be hidden out of sight. Complete with coat hooks, shelving and a base for storing anything from picnic blankets to wellies, an elegant classic settle bench will bring fantastic charm and character to your interior while creating a useful space to store outdoor equipment. Tying your utility bench in with the colour scheme of your kitchen will create a cohesive look, ensuring your seating complements your space stylistically as well as practically.
Kitchen islands are incredibly popular with our clients here at Classic Interiors, and with their breath-taking looks and amazing practical benefits, it’s not hard to see why. If you love hosting and entertaining friends and family, then adding a luxurious breakfast bar to your island is the perfect opportunity to enhance your design. A stylish breakfast bar is an ideal place to introduce inviting casual seating. Bar stools make a wonderful spot for guests to perch and chat as you wow them with your brilliant cooking. Bar stool seating set around a kitchen island will bring an effortlessly sophisticated and sociable ambience to your interior.
Last but certainly not least is the classic dining table. While kitchen islands make a dramatic and luxurious statement, they aren’t necessarily appropriate for sit down family meals, and if you don’t have space to accommodate both, depending on your lifestyle, you might be better off prioritising your dining table. Dining chairs can be more comfortable than bar stools over a longer period of time and are generally safer for young children. Like a kitchen island, a table will still come in handy when you need extra surfaces for food prep, however, a large central kitchen table will establish a more family orientated laidback atmosphere.
Whether you favour open-plan living or a more traditional layout, there’s no denying the fact that the kitchen is the most lively and sociable room in your home and so creating a spot for you, your family or your guests to take the weight off their feet and share the day’s events is a must. However, as this blog goes to show, there’s much more to incorporating seating into your kitchen than simply relying on your dining table. If you’d like to find out more about any of our wonderful kitchen seating ideas or to find out how we can help with your upcoming project, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Classic Interiors team by calling 0121 405 1240 or emailing hello@classicinteriors.co.uk.