The kitchen is considered by many to be the heart of the home. It’s where your clients refuel, share meals and have conversations with loved ones. Given the importance of the space, it makes perfect sense your clients will be keen to ensure the result is as practical as it is eye catching.
At Schweigen, we know a thing or two about what homeowners are looking for in terms of silent ventilation solutions and present these tips to keep in mind when working with your clients.
Kitchens are now almost exclusively open plan so that means noise and ventilation are key considerations to help ensure the space is comfortable for all in proximity. As the only kitchen appliance built for its placement and application, rangehoods now come in various sizes, designs, profiles, finishes and features to suit the requirements of increasingly sophisticated homeowners. They can now be installed anywhere in the kitchen space to vent unhealthy airborne grease, smoke, steam and odours outside of the home.
Like kitchen lighting, rangehood ducting should be planned during the initial stages of a new kitchen design. Left as an afterthought – duct design may become limited, performance impacted and mistakes disruptive to rectify.
Schweigen offers solutions to run the ducting through cabinetry and bulkheads, wall and roof cavities to motors installed externally on the roof, wall or eave – giving you unparalleled flexibility to design the kitchen of your client’s dreams without compromising on form or function. How you want the kitchen to look will determine how best to run the ducting.
- If you seek clean design lines in your kitchen – look no further than sleek undermount rangehoods. These darlings of integrated kitchens fit flush into overhead cabinetry to extract cooking exhaust unseen.
- If a timeless showpiece is what you’re after to break up cabinetry and lead gazes upwards – wallmount rangehoods are your answer. These are mounted against the backwall and over the cooktop for what is traditionally the best air extraction performance.
- If preserving unblocked views across an open plan kitchen with high ceilings is your goal – the powerful and stately ceiling cassettes promise to bring out the wow factor in your design. These are flush-mounted into ceilings or bulkheads so you miss nothing as you cook.
- High ceiling bringing you down? No problem. Island rangehoods are popular in kitchens with high ceilings but no bulkheads. They are designed as statement pieces to be suspended over cooktops on island and peninsula-type benchtops. Offboard rangehoods even enable conversation and entertainment to be enjoyed while cooking happens because all fan and motor noises are banished outside of the home where the motor is.
- Living large with an outdoor kitchen? Bring restaurant grade alfresco dining to any home with weather-resistant BBQ alfresco rangehoods designed to effectively deal with all that smoke and grease. These are available as both undermounts and wallmounts to fit your design.
With noise becoming a major issue in increasingly sealed and shared spaces repurposed for work and study at home, Schweigen also recommends the following tips to create healthier and more conducive spaces for interaction:
- False ceilings & bulkheads: Reduce the volume of space that needs to be heated or cooled, break up voids and reduce echoes with sound absorption materials like acoustic panels;
- Soft-closing cabinetry, doors & windows: your clients will love the bliss of cushioned hinges and soft close systems to preserve the peace;
- Integrated whitegoods: choose appliances that are designed to be installed directly into cabinetry, under a work surface or concealed behind a hinged door panel to enjoy noise insulation and maintain clean design lines in your kitchen; and
- Silent rangehoods: Developed with external motors that are uniquely mounted outside of the home to take all cooking steam, smoke, odours, airborne grease and motor noise out of the kitchen and into the ambient atmosphere.
For more information, please visit the Schweigen Inspiration Gallery to browse stunning award-winning kitchens across Australia and New Zealand.
