Best Ways To Enhance Your Kitchen Accessibility

Safety and easy accessibility are very crucial factors in the kitchen, especially in homes with wheelchair users. A kitchen with squeezed space, stubborn drawers, and dark cupboards can make your cooking process extremely difficult and unenjoyable.

A kitchen is accessible if its contents can be easily obtained by every household member, including those with disabilities and seniors. Making a kitchen handier and safer for all household members is usually a big concern for most homeowners.

This article discusses the twelve best ways to enhance kitchen accessibility and other essential tips to help you facelift your kitchen to be more convenient.

Twelve best ways to make your kitchen more accessible

There are tons of benefits you’ll enjoy for improving your kitchen’s accessibility. First, it promotes independent living for seniors and disabled individuals using wheelchairs. Secondly, accessible kitchens are safe and make cooking a more enjoyable activity.

Some of the ways you can make your kitchen more attainable include:

1. kitchen cabinet lighting

Locating kitchenware and reading spice labels is usually tricky and time-consuming if the cupboards are dark. Your kitchen cabinets can be darker for various reasons, for example, if your kitchen’s overhead lighting is dim.

In such cases, it’s best if you install LED lights inside the cupboards to aid easy visibility when looking into your kitchen them.

2. Kitchen cabinets drawer slides

Sometimes, the drawers of your cabinets may get jammed or require a lot of force to pull them out. Such occurrences can cause accidents, delay your cooking, or make you frustrated. You can avoid this hassle by installing drawer slides in your kitchen cabinets for easy and effortless opening.

Drawers usually get stuck if their slides are worn or out-of-date. Kitchen cabinet drawer slides improve accessibility to your kitchen drawers by reducing the effort needed to open them.

3. Pull Out Cabinet Drawer Organizer

A base drawer can help you to store those frequently used and essential kitchenware and condiments. This kitchen accessory will save the struggle of going through your highly-placed cabinets searching for spices or utensils during cooking.

4. Mountable racks

If your kitchen is small-spaced, you can optimize space use by installing mountable racks in your cabinets. You can use these racks to store spices and other smaller kitchen items to make your cabinets more spacious and organized.

5. Consider an adjustable revolving basket

Another great way to make your kitchen accessible is by use of revolving kitchen baskets. You can place these baskets in your cupboards or under the sink. These baskets are adjustable and come in varying sizes and layers for versatility.

Obtaining kitchenware from this storage tool is easy and fast as you only need to rotate them to get what you want. You can adjust the revolving basket to a preferred height to fit perfectly in your cabinet, depending on its size.

6. Work surfaces with multiple heights

Including multiple work surfaces with varying heights is a great tip for making your kitchen more accessible. Some kitchen-related activities may require higher work surfaces, while others may need lowly-raised work areas.

It’s also easier convincing your family member or friend to help you preparing cooking ingredients if they can comfortably access the kitchen counter.

7. Adjustable wall cabinets

Today, there are adjustable wall cupboards powered by electricity that significantly aid kitchen accessibility and convenience. Although pricy, this solution is worthwhile. Only one touch will lower and raise your cabinets to your preferred level whenever you want to access your cupboards.

8. Concealed hinges

Protruding hinges can easily injure you when moving around your kitchen. You can avoid such accidents by using concealed hinges on your kitchen cabinets. These hinges are usually available in three major types; the inserted, overlay, and half overlay hinge.

The installation process will determine which of these three hinges to use. You can also opt for the soft close concealed hinges. These hinges usually allow your cabinet doors to close softly and smoothly, irrespective of the weight or force used to close the doors.

9. Improved kitchen layout

Even though you don’t have a senior or disabled person in your home, it’s still best for your kitchen layout to be friendly to wheelchair users too. Therefore, it should be more spacious for easy wheelchair movement and have an appropriate countertop height for a convenient working surface.

The typical countertop surface height is usually about 36”. This height usually is higher for wheelchair users. It’s best to adjust to about 28”-34”, considering most wheelchair armrest height is usually 29”.

Other factors to consider include knee clearance beneath the counters. You under the counter should approximately 19” deep and 30” wide to comfortable footrest and maneuvering.

10. Easy storage access

Your kitchen cabinets may be hard to access if they’re highly placed or have hard-to-open shelves. Installing or purchasing base cabinets or roll-out shelves and adding extra drawers can make the contents of your cabinets more attainable and improve your kitchen’s organization.

11. Easily accessed kitchen appliances

Some appliances provide more easy ways to utilize them and access their contents. Most drawer kitchen appliances are easy to use today, and they come in multiple sizes to accommodate versatile customers.

For example, mini-refrigerators are more accessible than conventional fridges. Some refrigerators come with freezer drawers at their bottoms for enhanced accessibility for individuals who can’t reach the top shelves of the refrigerator. such options are great solutions for enhancing kitchen accessibility, especially when you have disabled young, shorter individuals, or seniors in the house.

12. Add a table

Having a small kitchen counter can make your cooking process messy and complex. You can consider putting a small table in a strategic position in your kitchen to hold those extra items you can’t keep on the counter when preparing meals and moving around your kitchen.

Conclusion

Kitchen accessibility is essential for a safe and fun cooking environment. While there are several ways you can aid your kitchen attainability, several factors come into play for efficient kitchen accessibility.

It would be best to consider your kitchen and cabinets space, budget, and the needs of household members to determine which accessories you should procure or install in your kitchen.

Luckily, most kitchen accessories come in many sizes, designs, and shapes to cater to clients’ varying needs. Venace intelligent technology Inc. offers an array of household products you can utilize to revamp your kitchen and improve its accessibility, organization, and safety.