Kitchen design guide

If you're buying a dishwasher, you'll need to consider things like water consumption, how often it'll be used, how much space you have and how it'll suit your kitchen. Read our buyer's guide to find out what to look for.

Buying the right appliances involves more than just choosing colours that will match your kitchen or even just a brand you've trusted in the past...

The materials you choose for your benchtop not only determine how it looks and feels (although that's a big part of it).

Do you know the difference between an L shaped kitchen and a G shaped kitchen? Know what a galley kitchen is? Learn about different kitchen layouts, and their advantages and disadvantages.

Kitchens offer a tremendous choice in terms of design styles. Learn more about modern, traditional, contemporary, minimalist, outdoor, provincial and custom kitchen styles, and what they normally involve.

Splashbacks are one part of your kitchen where you'll have a fair amount of freedom in terms of design choices - and budget permitting, there are a wide range of options for splashbacks.

Depending on the work you need done, you may need to give a little thought to who's going to do plumbing or gasfitting work in your home. Read our guide on how to choose the right plumber.

The kitchen work triangle - often just referred to as ‘the kitchen triangle’ - is a basic but time-honoured principle for designing ergonomic, functional kitchens. But is it still relevant?

Once upon a time - not all that long ago - kitchens were arranged on very basic terms by people who didn’t particularly know (or care) how they’d be used.

Polished concrete's a very flexible material in terms of design, and is becoming much more popular in both contemporary and traditional kitchens.

Most of the time, if a tap in your home is leaky, dripping or hard to close it's the result of a broken washer. While it's possible that your leaking tap's a 'washerless' tap (i.e. one with a ball, cartridge or ceramic disc mechanism - see the 'Types of taps' article linked below), it's a lot less likely that these taps will be leaking like this. You can usually tell if you have a ceramic disc type tap because it'll only need a quarter or half turn to fully open the tap.

Your interior and exterior walls are up and your house is really starting to take shape – but there’s still the matter of putting in kitchen cabinets, skirting boards, architraves, cornices, ceiling roses, dado rails and so forth.

Find out more about how waterproofing and tiling are done to ensure that they meet the relevant Australian Standards.

In most plumbing setups, it takes a while for hot water to reach the hot tap when it's turned on. Cold water diverters recycle the cold water which would otherwise pour down the drain in this time.

The position of your hot water system relative to your taps is vital to your system's efficiency. Find out how best to plan your layout, and what to consider when space is limited.

The lighting design in your kitchen will make a vast difference to how comfortable and safe it is, as well as to how good it ends up looking. Learn the right way to plan and arrange lighting in your kitchen.

There's nothing worse than a leaky tap - except perhaps a dirty and leaking tap. Find out how to clean and maintain your fittings.

Also called drains and plugholes, wastes are the grills through which water is drained as it leaves your bathroom. Find out what variations exist for wastes.

Taps can come in matching bathroom sets, but can also be mixed and matched to great effect.

Blocked drains in your kitchen are no fun - but thankfully they're not too difficult to deal with. Read our guide on how to unblock a drain and save yourself from a watery disaster.