Laminate Worktops

There are quite many options when you think along the lines of adding items that would enhance the looks and utility of your kitchen, but coming to the most used areas, of which the kitchen top is the busiest, you’ll be hard pressed to look for a better substitute than laminate.

It goes without saying that the most important reason for people favoring laminate is its strong composition. Usually, bonding of particleboard with an appropriate adhesive makes laminate worktops. While making the product resilient, this technique facilitates having boards in different colors and surface finishes.

The other advantage of this material is that you can clean easily and we know kitchens are sure to have spills from time to time. Moreover, laminates don’t get chipped off easily during the normal course of activities in the kitchen when some pot or pan is dropped accidentally.

If you opt to use laminate, you should so design the kitchen that the laminate remains the focal point. Another aspect to be borne in mind while designing the kitchen is to take note of how frequently the appliances and cabinets are used while you are working in the kitchen during different hours of the day.

Floor Plans

Depending on the layout of the room, you may start with the floor plan. Usually, there are three options, and all are equally popular and proven to work well since long. It may be added here that laminate being a flexible material can be cut to suit many designs of cabinets for the kitchen and its worktop or even flooring.

You may choose the simplest of plans known as one wall plan. As becomes apparent from the name of the plan, it employs just one wall for accommodating all the cabinets and kitchen appliances. This is a very practical plan and proves to be very convenient, and thus very popular. But there are other plans too.

The other plans include an L shaped plan wherein the appliances and cabinets get separated. Perhaps you would prefer to go for the galley or the peninsula kitchen that comprises of an open wall.

The Work Triangle

Laminate can further be gainfully exploited for designing your work triangle in the kitchen. Work triangle refers to the area between the sink, the refrigerator and the stove within which most of your movements in the kitchen are distributed. Having a lot of space on the laminate countertop surely helps to easily approach the required items and thus maintains continuity of materials while you work there.

Apart from the flooring and the worktops you need to consider additional factors while thinking of designing the kitchen. For instance, lighting is another important consideration for keeping the work area well illuminated. So, you will need to assess the correct size and number of electrical outlets required in the kitchen.

All in all, the design of the kitchen should facilitate easy and comfortable working as you spend a good part of your time therein while you are at home. And, in any case you would like to keep the environments healthy and hygienic and laminate is just one helpful material for achieving that.

Composite worktops, being somewhat porous, are vulnerable to staining and the only way to get rid of staining is by rubbing the surface a bit with abrasive paper. But, laminate worktops don’t need any such treatment because they are totally stain resistant.

Granite and Marble worktops can look out of this world and their prices have been coming down for quite sometime but the problem is these are natural products and you can’t ever be too sure of what you may be getting. In case of laminate worktops, the pattern is conventional and not surprising, as some of the patterns are only repeated every meter or so along the length of the worktop.

Granite and Marble countertops are porous too and need to be sealed against staining. However, the sealing tends to wear down and could even wear off in due course of time. Moreover, marble and granite worktops are too heavy thus necessitating installation by a specialist, as it is almost impossible to make even the slightest of cuts that are generally needed to get a perfect fit. Installation of laminate worktops poses no such problem.

Though stainless steel worktops have excellent looks when new, but soon begin to look dull on developing scratches, which can’t be avoided for long, and finally the worktops attain a different sheen. But, once again, these tops can’t be cut to size at site, and that is a drawback. Further, stainless steel worktops prices are more expensive than laminate worktops.

These days you also get glass worktops with marvelous finishes. Here again, they are cut to exact size at the point of purchase, as it’s not practical to cut them at site.

Glass worktops are also prone to scratching and thermal shock. So, once again, laminate worktops score better. Of course, you also get concrete worktops but they really don’t find many buyers, as there are available concrete look-a-likes in laminate worktops.

Therefore, it would be worthwhile to give a prolonged thought before finalizing on your worktops. Try visualizing their looks a couple of years down the line and do compare the cost with other kinds of laminates.