A new kitchen is exciting but can be overwhelming too. Due to the investment, and to be sustainable, you need the kitchen you choose to last a really long time so design decisions that you make now, still need to appeal in 10 years or more.
So, how do you go about that when it can feel like there’s too much choice and too many decisions to make? Certainly, your kitchen designer can help guide you, but you need a way of ordering your thoughts as well as looking for ideas. One great way to this is by using Pinterest.
Most people are familiar with Pinterest, but if you’ve not used it before, it’s essentially online scrapbooking. It’s a way of keeping all your ideas in one place. These can be ideas that you find on Pinterest itself, stuff you find on other websites, or items that you upload yourself, such as your own photos.
Here’s how to use it
The way Pinterest works is you create what they call a Board. Think of this as a digital mood board. Create your Board and call it something meaningful such as ‘New Kitchen’. You can keep it public, which means that anyone can see it, or make it private so that it can only be viewed by you and anyone that you grant access to.
The items that you add to your Board are called Pins. (Think of pinning clippings on a notice board). It’s probably easiest to start with ideas that are already on Pinterest itself. Use the search bar at the top of the page to find pins related to what you are looking for. Obvious search terms will be things like ‘kitchens’, ‘modern kitchens’, ‘white kitchens’ etc, and these broad terms are a good place to start but you can drill down to much finer detail such as kitchen handles, island units, splashbacks etc.
One of the biggest advantages Pinterest has is that each pin will usually link to somewhere outside the site, often the retailer or supplier that sells the item. This makes it easy for when you want to start buying things.
You can also add your own notes (just for yourself) or comments, which will be public on the Pin.
You can add as many Pins as you want to your Board. However, if you find you have accumulated a lot, you can organise them into Sections. These are like Boards within the main Board, so you can create them for different topics eg flooring, tiles, lighting etc.
To demonstrate this, we have created a new board and included a number of sections. The Board that we have created is about planning a vintage style kitchen, but this is just for illustration – you can of course do one on any theme. You can see the main Board here and then look at different sections, for example, this one on Splashbacks.
Another really useful feature is the ability to collaborate and share with other people. You can share your ideas with your kitchen designer so that they can really understand your preferences. This is really helpful to give them a starting point and allow them to make suggestions. You can even make them a collaborator on the Board, allowing them to add their own pins for you to consider. It makes it a real two-way process and that usually results in a finished kitchen that everyone is happy with.
To maximise the tool, think about the following:
