Having a well-designed kitchen totally levels up how you live and take care of yourself in your home. If your kitchen is beautiful and efficient, you are much more likely to spend time there, enjoying connecting with your loved ones and doing all the things that promote health and wellness. Let’s talk about some great health and wellness features for your kitchen.

Health and Wellness Features for Your Kitchen

As an interior designer and wellness expert, I love designing kitchens around health and wellness!

I love including in kitchens the things that really matter like places for connecting over meal prep; smart refrigerators with family hubs; and streamlined good looks. In this blog I’m sharing an at-a-glance check list to help you create beautiful, health promoting features in your kitchen. It’s without a doubt, the hardest working, most important room in your home!

Soothing Colors and Textures for the Kitchen

Soothing colors are cool and muted. They are colors like pale blue, light green, dusty lavender and subtle neutrals.

Textures that add comfort to your kitchen can come from baskets, wood and tile. 

Supports Healthy Meals and Food Prep

Optimizing your kitchen can be done without the need for structural changes when you organize it by work zones. Identify your three most frequently done tasks (chopping; juicing; baking; stove top; cleaning; blending etc.) and optimize those work zones first by having the things you need for each task in nearby drawers.

Windows and Views of Nature

Bringing nature into your home via windows and glass doors such as French doors not only expands your spaces visually, but also brings emotional wellness and stress relief into your home.

Opening windows daily during the most temperate times of the day, even just a crack freshens air and ventilates rooms beautifully. Also see ventilation.

Fresh Flowers and Plants

Plants add beauty, elevate mood, reduce stress and improve air quality. Biophilic design pertains to designing and living with plants. As a designer, I know from experience that homes don’t look finished without potted plants and flowers.

Air Quality and Ventilation

Poor indoor air quality is a known health hazard with fumes emitting from paint; carpets; building materials; cleaning products and more. When building or buying a home consider installing a HEPA air purifier or at least have the air tested by a professional.

This is especially important for children, elderly and anyone with chronic health problems.

Non-Toxic Flooring in the Kitchen

A knowledgeable flooring specialist is so helpful when choosing flooring and building materials as there as so many things to consider. I like Green Building Supply online. They have stylish, non-toxic, certified safe for
sensitivities options including phthalate-free luxury vinyl tiles, certified safe and ecofriendly bamboo and hardwoods. If you decide on engineered wood flooring, choose ones that are made with urea-formaldehyde glues.

When choosing any wood products ensure they are not made with excessive formaldehyde.

Safety Features for the Kitchen

So important considering many disasters happen right in your own home! Work with licensed, reputable building professionals for all building and remodeling projects. Safety features includes properly installed electrical systems, home fire sprinkler systems, slip resistant flooring, anti-scald faucets, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, and more.

Other Non-Toxic Kitchen Building Materials

Choose building materials that are non-toxic and mildew resistant such as stainless steel, copper, ceramic tiles, zinc, quartz, porcelain tile, cork, linoleum. Though there have been questions on the safety of granite and
marble, through various studies they are still considered a safe option for the home.

Request spec sheets on any materials you use to ensure good certification standards, especially with MCS (multiple chemical sensitivities).

Bringing the Joy

This one is highly personal and so often underestimated! Things that bring joy to your home are things you find to be beautiful, useful, spiritual and/or sentimental. If you’re lucky, everything in your home will have at
least one of these components. Ideas: framed photos, heirlooms, mementos from travels, gifts from your family and friends, things from nature.

I have my maternal, great grandmother’s antique bread bowl and my paternal great grandmother’s engraved sterling silver flatware. Especially cool is the fact that the latter’s monogram was S!

 

Kitchen Amenities

The kitchen is the hub of the home now more than ever thanks to all this great new technology! For the appliance lover there are steam convection Ovens, smart refrigerators, voice activated faucets and smart range hoods.

Design your kitchen around healthy meal prep with plenty of antimicrobial counter space and tools like Acme juicers, Excalibur dehydrating trays and blenders such as VitaMix.

Kitchen Work Zones for Meal Prepping

The family room is not the only place to reconnect with yourself and your loved ones. Try rethinking your kitchen for two cooks. Cooking and eating your meals together is one of life’s great pleasures. 

Smart Kitchen Features

Technology and wellness do not always mix with EMF’s covering most of our urban areas. Decide on your priorities from choices like smart hubs, smart appliances, climate control and security features.

Antibacterial Kitchen Counters and Surfaces

Quartz and ceramic counters, and wood and bamboo floors are generally speaking, the healthiest choices for your home. When choosing flooring consider the manufacturing processes too, as many floor types have phthalates, formaldehyde and noxious adhesives.

Granite requires sealing but is still considered a healthy surface.