With the nights drawing in and the days getting a whole lot shorter, you might be looking at your kitchen and thinking about cooking up a hearty, warming meal to beat the autumn and winter blues.
To really make this work, your kitchen needs to be a cosy place to be. Whether it’s a family home or a small apartment, your kitchen should be a warm, pleasant place to prepare food, relax and talk. In this post, we’ll run through the heating options on the table that’ll help you achieve exactly this.
Revolutionise your radiators
Radiators can tend to be an afterthought - at least up until the outdoor temperatures plummet and you become reliant on the heat they pump out. From a stylistic point of view, there are plenty of things you could do to ramp up the cosiness in your kitchen. Swapping a standard horizontal radiator for a vertical option will not only mean more heat is expelled, but will also add a certain quirkiness to the space.
This kind of kitchen heating solution is ideal for larger kitchens where the oven’s heat isn’t quite enough to keep things toasty, and where you have the wall space to extend the size of your radiators.
Have a reshuffle
If you want to go a step further and engage in a full-scale reshuffle of your kitchen, have a think about where the radiator is actually placed. Placing it next to the fridge can result in the latter operating less efficiently, as it’ll be working harder to keep its contents cool, using more energy in the process.
To maximise cosiness around a radiator, why not construct a breakfast bar directly over it? Breakfast will be far more pleasant with a piping hot radiator warming your feet on chilly winter mornings - so much so you might not want to tear yourself away to go to work!
Rip it up and start again
Thousands of years ago, the original home heating option was evident in Roman villas all across Europe. Known as hypocaustum, it consisted of a system of small fires lit underneath the mosaic floors of these elegant homes.
Harking back to ancient technology such as this perhaps stretches the definition of ‘tried and tested’, so luckily there’s a modern analogue to the Romans’ cosy innovation - underfloor heating. These modern systems consist of copper wiring mats fitted under your floor and controlled by a thermostat in much the same way as a central heating system.
The best time to install an underfloor heating system is when you’re shopping around for new kitchen tiles - so pick out a design theme that appeals to you and combine your style overhaul with a heating upgrade. The days of cold feet on kitchen tiles will be long gone once you’ve made this rewarding upgrade.
Live the range life
Before central heating, kitchen cosiness was achieved using a great, big range-style stove and keeping it stoked all through winter. In a modern home, this can create a homely feeling that central heating just can’t conjure. The market-leading brand for this kind of oven is AGA, but you can capture this snug winter feeling with a far cheaper wood-burning stove.
Either way, there’s nothing like the feeling of an oven pumping out heat in the depths of winter, whether you’re slow-cooking a gorgeous shepherd’s pie or reheating yesterday’s takeaway.
Image: Unsplash
So, whatever you’re after in your cosy kitchen remodel, we hope our heating tips have helped you on the way to transforming your interior design dreams into reality. You’ve got plenty of time before winter sets in for the foreseeable, so why not start your planning today?
Author bio:
Suhayl Laher works at Tiles Direct, one of the UK’s largest independent tile distributors and retailers - bringing design inspiration to homeowners, architects and developers.
Main Featured Image: Unsplash
