Kitchen Designs versus Kitchen Plans

Kitchen Design Helps Bring Your IKEA Kitchen to Life

When it comes to kitchens, IKEA is careful about the word Design. They don’t use the word when describing their services. Instead, they discuss your kitchen “plan” and provide the IKEA Home Planner tool.

The difference between the words design and plan is vast. Yet most IKEA kitchen buyers don’t notice or understand the difference. A professional kitchen designer can help you create your dream kitchen more efficiently than the IKEA Home Planner. This article will explain how.

How are Professional Kitchen Design and the IKEA Home Planner Different?

We can illustrate the difference between planning and design in a simple analogy:

• Kitchen planning is like Tetris.
• Kitchen design is like Minecraft.

IKEA’s Home Planner is like Tetris. You’re trying to fit shapes together as efficiently as possible. Professional kitchen design is like Minecraft; players use a handful of tools to create entire worlds.

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The IKEA Home Planner Overlooks Important Details

The IKEA Home Planner app lets you create a virtual room with cabinets and appliances. With Tetris, you’re not maximizing the potential of your space. You’re just filling it up.

IKEA’s in-person kitchen planning service is similar. You are limited to four hours with someone to help you fill the virtual room. These planners are efficient and know how to use the software, but they are not kitchen designers.

Kitchen Designers Focus on You

Design is about you and thinks about:

• The unique way in which you use your kitchen. If young children are helping you in the kitchen, you’ll want items within reach of those little hands. Or, if you have a small kitchen with limited counter space, you may want an appliance garage to tuck everything away.
• Your style. What colors do you like? Which handle style would look best with the door style you like?
• Innovative storage solutions. You could plop in IKEA’s cookie-cutter storage solutions. You could get creative with your cabinets and build a kitchen island, a custom appliance garage, or a hideaway laptop station.

Online Help for IKEA Kitchen Design

If you’re committed to creating a kitchen design, you can learn a lot by digging around online.

Customers have researched different options by starting and participating in Houzz threads. And the IKEA Kitchen Hacks section of our blog is helpful. Of course, the IKD portfolio contains some of our best work.