Kitchens have evolved far beyond a simple cooking space. They’re now designed to include a place to dine and cozier seating areas to relax and unwind, essentially combining the kitchen, dining room, and lounge into one multifunctional room.
It’s why the kitchen is widely considered the heart of the home – and designed with that ethos in mind. This approach has only gone further in recent years, with some of the most on-trend kitchens looking less like kitchens and more like living rooms. And some designers do believe it’s gone too far; the kitchen has become too multifunctional, too soft, too lived-in.
So, should your kitchen become this room-for-everything space? Or should we look to return the cooking space to, well, a place to cook? We’ve asked designers to settle the debate – turns out, they’re divided, too.
‘The best kitchens feel less like a room full of cabinetry and appliances and more like a room you genuinely want to spend time in. We always say a kitchen should feel collected and integrated into the rest of the home, not like you suddenly walked into a showroom,’ say Jordan and Barry.
(Image credit: The Brownstone Boys / Joseph Kramm Photography)
The kitchen as the heart of the home is not a new concept. Turn back the clocks a century or three, and the saying still rings true. Except back then, it referred to the single-room home most regular people would occupy, with a roaring fire providing heat and a place to cook. It was a practical decision, not an aesthetic one.
But is the essence of these spaces still the same today? For Jordan Slocum and Barry Bordelon, the design duo behind The Brownstone Boys, that question can’t be answered without first acknowledging that what it means to be the heart of the home has fundamentally changed compared to what it was in the past.
‘Historically, especially in the old homes we work on, kitchens were tucked away and designed almost entirely for function,’ they explain. ‘Today, they’re where so much of life happens. You cook there, yes, but you also have your morning coffee, kids do homework at the island, friends gather around while you’re making dinner, and everyone inevitably ends up there during a party.’
The design of this kitchen instantly creates a sense that this is the heart of the home, with counter seating framing the island to face the workstation, creating a more social layout. ‘The kitchen is inherently social,’ says Zoë. ‘It’s where we cook, gather, and work, and it’s where everyone inevitably ends up during a party.’
(Image credit: Zoë Feldman Design)
Now that kitchens have become a hub for everyday life, where living, hosting, and day-to-day tasks are carried out, it’s been recentered as the heart of the home. It’s become more social, and the decor infinitely softer, so spending time in these rooms has grown in appeal and comfort. And for many designers, that’s reason enough to declare the kitchen the firm centerpiece.
‘The kitchen is, in my view, unquestionably one of the central hubs of the home. It’s where families start the day and, more often than not, where they end it too – gathered around a counter or table. Even at a dinner party, guests gravitate toward whoever’s at the stove, whether the host planned it that way or not. That’s simply how a kitchen works,’ says interior designer Katie Harbison.
‘That instinct matters, because the alternative is worse than it sounds. A host confined to the kitchen – physically cut off from the room where everyone else has gathered – stops being part of the evening. Cooking becomes a task performed in isolation rather than an extension of the hosting itself, and the atmosphere carries on without them. The same is true day to day – a kitchen that separates the person cooking from the people they’re cooking for turns a shared moment into a chore.’
‘Treat it like a room, not a workspace. I like adding a sofa to a kitchen. You’ll use it more than you think, and it invites people to linger even if there isn’t an active meal being shared. Add art and rugs to contribute to that not-strictly-functional feeling,’ says Zoë
(Image credit: Zoë Feldman Design)
As kitchens have moved from awkward extensions at the back of the house and grown in scale, they’ve naturally become a gathering point. It’s less about forcing a design, and more about responding to how people naturally use kitchens for a variety of tasks and needs. No matter the size or location of the kitchen, people seem to gravitate toward it.
‘It doesn’t matter how large the home is or how many incredible spaces we design into it – home theaters, oversized family rooms, dreamy primary suites with the comfiest beds – life still happens in the kitchen,’ adds Rayana Schmitz of Firefinish Interiors. ‘It’s where the day actually unfolds: coffee in the morning, homework at the island, wine while someone cooks dinner. No other room pulls double duty quite like it, which is exactly why it’s still the most requested space in nearly every project I take on.’
Yet not everyone shares their sentiment. For designer Bryan Graybill, the kitchen has evolved a step too far, and its true purpose and function have become lost in translation. In his recent column for Homes & Gardens he talks about the need for a ‘proper kitchen’. ‘For me, the kitchen is fundamentally a working room,’ he responds, explaining that while kitchens should be ‘beautiful and domestic’ rooms, they still need to be functional first and foremost, rather than ‘become the place where everyone congregates.’
Instead of a large, built-in island, the team at Macfarlane Van der Heul introduced a wok table, introducing a freestanding piece that prioritizes the functional needs of the kitchen.
(Image credit: deVOL Kitchens/Macfarlane Van der Heul)
‘I think we’ve asked the kitchen to do too much,’ he continues. ‘The large kitchen island has become almost shorthand for luxury, when often it’s really just an enormous object everyone has to walk around. I’d rather have a proper work table, something that feels like furniture and can evolve over time, and then allow some of the kitchen functions to migrate into a larder or scullery. It makes the kitchen quieter visually and more pleasant to actually cook in.’
He’s not the only one who feels that the oversized kitchen island has confused the purpose of a kitchen. ‘We’ve started pushing back against the idea that the kitchen needs to do everything,’ Jordan and Barry admit. ‘Not every kitchen needs an enormous island with six stools that becomes the dining room, homework station, home office and cocktail bar. Sometimes giving those activities their own spaces actually makes a home work better.’
So if the kitchen isn’t the heart of the home, what is the alternative? It’s all about compromise, and letting the rooms you naturally want to spend the most time in become the hub, rather than forcing the kitchen to be this multifunctional space just because it’s on trend right now.
For Katie, the best kitchens keep ‘the cook connected to the room while giving the mess somewhere to go. Get that balance right, and you get the best of both – a kitchen that’s genuinely the heart of the home, without ever looking like one that’s been working hard to be.’
(Image credit: Katie Harbison)
‘If there is a heart of the home, I’d probably argue that it’s the room where people are most comfortable doing absolutely nothing. Usually that’s the sitting room. A fire, a comfortable chair, a dog asleep somewhere, a drink on a table. The kitchen nourishes you, but the sitting room is where you actually live,’ Bryan explains. But it doesn’t have to be a singular room, either.
‘I’m much more interested in a house having several centers of gravity,’ he adds. ‘The kitchen can be one of them, particularly in the morning. But then perhaps the garden becomes the center in the afternoon, the bar at cocktail hour, and the sitting room after dinner. A good house should encourage people to move through it. Rooms should have different purposes and different moments in the day.’
The idea of having more than one space that becomes a hub also appeals to Jordan and Barry, who design spaces that respond to how clients live day-to-day rather than ‘to dictate where people should gather.’ In many cases, this means multiple rooms play a part. ‘Some of our favorite homes have several little hearts rather than one giant central hub,’ they explain. ‘There’s something really lovely about moving through a home and having different rooms draw you in at different moments of the day.’
Just because Bryan doesn’t think a kitchen should be designed with quite so many functions, that doesn’t mean he believes it should be anti-social, either. ‘I’d simply stop asking it to carry the emotional weight of the entire house. Make it warm, useful and beautiful. Then give people reasons to wander elsewhere.’
(Image credit: Bryan Graybill / Tim Lenz Photography)
The greatest appeal is that the plethora of requirements no longer falls entirely on the kitchen, which, in some cases, designers feel has become overwhelmed with too many jobs, some of which hinder productivity. Having more than one ‘heart room’ depending on the function feels more natural, and means the kitchen can bring back some of the more functional qualities that have become buried.
‘I’m less interested in assigning a room a role than designing around the way people naturally use it. If you’re a major cook or entertainer or want to multitask in the kitchen, then make it the heart of the home. But that’s not a hard and fast rule if it’s not a place you spend much time,’ interior designer Zoë Feldman suggests. The real heart of the home? ‘Whatever room you gravitate toward most. That could be the family room, the library, or any space devoted simply to being together.’
The truth is, every home is different. The kitchen might be the perfect social hotspot in one home, but the complete opposite in another. The key is understanding your home’s flow and how you live in it – there’s a fine line between a kitchen being the heart of the home and becoming the epicenter of chaos.
In many homes, the kitchen is the heart, creating a place that’s a practical workspace as well as a social one – but it doesn’t have to be. If your kitchen is more of a functional room, your sitting room, dining room, or even a home library can serve as the soul of your home.
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