Kitchen Cabinet Island - A Lot More Than A Mere Cupboard

A kitchen cabinet island increases storage while extending the overall design of the kitchen's cabinetry.

Essentially a free-standing set of cabinets, kitchen cabinet islands also utilize floor space in a purposeful way.

Kitchen islands are often used by design experts to draw focus and center activity.

Kitchen islands are used to reconfigure traffic flow and the proximity of the eating and cooking areas. They also serve to divide or separate large areas.

Increased Storage Is The Main Idea

In large kitchens, islands with cabinets bring the kitchen closer to the cooking area, so to speak, by providing additional work space and storage in a way wall cabinets can not.

Many installed islands have raised or drop-leaf serving areas to link the cooking and eating areas together and to convert the kitchen into a multiple-use area between meals.

The main ideas behind islands with cabinets, though, is storage.

Most islands combine cabinets with utensil drawers, slatted, wire-grid, or solid shelves, and bins to store all the ingredients, cooking utensils, appliances and other things needed for convenient cooking right at hand.

Because a cabinet island provides such a strong visual focal point in the kitchen’s design, some owners choose materials and finishes that are complementary to the kitchen cabinetry rather than matching.

Base and frame materials include stainless or zinc-plated steel, and wrought iron, or woods like Red Oak, Northern Maple, Birch, Poplar, Basswood, and Beech, or more exotic woods like Liptus, a plantation-grown South American wood, or Nyatoh, a plantation-grown wood from Malaysia sometimes called Asian Cherry.

Cabinet islands may have a countertop matching that of the rest of the kitchen, but materials with more specific characteristics are often used like stone--granite, marble or soapstone--stainless steel, or butcher block, a very traditional look that is especially useful in food preparation.