KitchenA kitchen or cooking room is a room used for food preparation. A modern kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, extractor hood, a sink with cold and hot water on tap for cleaning food and dishwashing. It also has refrigerator and a microwave oven. Modern cooking room often also feature a dishwasher. It also has cabinets to store food and dishes.Although the main function of this room is cooking, it can be the center of other activities as well, like be the place where the family eats, provided it is large enough. Frequently, it is the most comforting room in the house, where family and friends tend to congregate. The perfection of the extractor hood since 1980’s allowed an open cooking room integrated more or less with the living room without causing the whole apartment or house to smell.
The integration of cooking room and the living area goes hand in hand with a change in the perception of cooking: increasingly, cooking is seen as a creative and sometimes social act instead of work, especially in upper social classes. The enhanced status of cooking also made the cooking room a prestige object for showing off one’s wealth or cooking professionalism.
The cooking room has the three main functions: storage, preparation and cooking. The places for these functions should be arranged in such a way that works at one place do not interfere with a work at another place. A natural arrangement is a triangle, with the refrigerator, the sink and the stove at a vertex each. So, the most popular forms of arrangement of cooking room are in form of L, U and G, which are frequently used in open kitchen. Modern cooking room often have enough informal space to allow people eat in it without having to use formal dining room. Such areas are called “breakfast areas”, “breakfast bars”. Concerning materials, the most popular styles include natural light timber such as maple, presented in simple clean designs in natural color that brighten the room. The walls should be painted also in light colors. Appliances and finishing details compliment today’s modern hi tech kitchen with lots of stainless steel. The most traditional sink is made of stainless steel.
In modern cooking rooms granite is preferable material for countertops. Granite is the second only to diamonds in its hardness. It is durable stone that requires little maintenance and can be highly polished or finished in a variety of ways.
Granite countertops are available in dozens of rich and elegant textures and colors ranging from light-colored accents to the deeper and darker tones. Granite countertops have become the countertop of choice because it adds the value of your home. Since today’s kitchen is the busiest room in the house the lighting design is one of the most important design considerations. The lighting should be adequate so that you can perform daily functions in areas, where the most of the work is done. There must be ambient lighting, task lighting and decorative lighting. Ambient lighting is the general lighting in the room. This type of lighting is needed for all casual activities. Task lighting is commonly achieved with small light sources using higher and more focused levels of light with a combination of cabinet lights and overhead lights that are strategically located. Decorative lighting can add sophistication and color to a space.
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For some people, the open cooking room had the advantage that they could be with the guests while cooking. For others, a kitchen highly-equipped with top special appliances is used to impress and project social status rather than cooking. 
