With firm European roots, Hettich has proudly remained a family-owned business since it was founded in Germany in the late 1880s.
To download your full guide to planning an intelligent kitchen CLICK HERE!
Today, having gained over 130 years of experience manufacturing high-quality innovative furniture fittings, we’ve grown to a team of almost 7,000 dedicated staff covering more than 100 countries around the globe.
As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of furniture fittings, we’re continuing to steer the way forward in contemporary design – driven by our appetite and talent for entrepreneurship, new ideas, and intelligent technology. We can make your living spaces work seamlessly and look stunning with a huge range of quality furniture fittings including:
- Award-winning softy close hinge and draw systems
- Folding and sliding door systems
- Stylish handles and lighting
- Ergonomic storage solutions such as pull-out pantries and waste sorting systems
Accessories to get more out of your space
We like to think outside the box, which is why we also design and manufacture a wide variety of smart furniture accessories. The Hettich accessories range has been specially developed by our experts to complement our products, further enhancing the enjoyment and usability of living spaces all-around your home.
German quality you can trust
Hettich products meet the highest demands on quality. Hettich products undergo regular testing to ensure consistent quality over a prolonged period of production. This is where our internal laboratory cooperates with external testing institutes.
Testing the durability of Hettich products is a key aspect in developing our products. Strength, wear resistance and product safety is verified in comprehensive endurance tests. One example: drawers or hinges are put through a large number of closing and opening cycles reflecting the many years of use in a home. Product safety is extremely important to us. Hettich fittings and the cabinetry they are used in must form a safe unit that presents no risk whatsoever when they are used in the home. Comprehensive overloading tests carried out as early as the product development phase lets us reveal and eliminate potential hazards early on.
Attention to detail
Designing a beautiful kitchen that’s warm and inviting for your family and guests is also a top priority. You can trust Hettich to ensure your kitchen will rise to every occasion with our wide selection of on-trend finishes including stylish handles and a choice of sophisticated lighting options.
The idea of renovating a kitchen can seem like a daunting prospect, but it doesn’t have to be. From inspiration and layout ergonomics and key design trends, our wal-through guide to planning an intelligent kitchen offers all the hints, tips, and insights you need to ensure you get the most of your space and budget.
The planning phase
Working out a plan (and sticking to it) is critical to any successful kitchen renovation. Developing a clear idea about how you want to use your space, what it should look like, and the steps you’ll need to take to get them there is key to achieving the result you’re after, right on budget.
A well-planned kitchen can also make a huge difference to your life. With the right features, you’re new kitchen can save you time, stress, reduce fatigue and the risk of injury, and even give you more storage space than you ever thought was possible.
Balancing budget and expectations
With the average kitchen renovation cost in Australia ranging from $18,000 to $100.000, knowing your budget is your first step towards working out what you can realistically do with your kitchen space. From low to high, here’s an indication of how your budget might influence your expectations around the scope of your project and kitchen features.
Skech it out first
A kitchen design expert will assist with your design. To get started for your brief for your designer, sketch out your desired layout.
Know your brief: There are many reasons why people decide to renovate a kitchen such as adding value to a home or making improvements to better suit a family’s activities and lifestyle. Being aware of why you’re renovating is important to determining your order of priorities when it comes to weighing up things like functionality, ergonomics, layout, and finishes which boost visual appeal.
To help achieve your objectives within budget, create a checklist of those ‘must-have’ and ‘nice-to-have’ features with your family or purpose firmly in mind. This way, you can be sure you’ll make well-balanced decisions during the planning phase and as the project unfolds.
Some of the most common things people look for in a new kitchen include:
- modernised/on-trend look and feel
- More storage
- Larger floor space
- Feeling of openness with adjoining living spaces
- Increased workbench area
- improved manoeuvrability around key work areas
- Dining and entertaining space
Seek Inspiration. Not everyone is blessed with raw interior design talent, so putting some time into researching kitchen layouts and design ideas could help you realise what you want to get out of your own space. Instagram, Pintrest, magazines, and online design platforms like Houzz are full of varied and inspiring images. Visual resources such as these could help you realise your likes and dislikes and give you direction around colour scheme, layout, lighting, and even how you want your kitchen furniture to function.
Build your own vision. While it’s beneficial to take design inspiration from other sources, try not to become too restricted by other people’s concepts. What makes a perfect kitchen can be different for all kinds of families, so be open to collecting as many different images as possible, noting down the specific elements that appeal to you.
Once you’ve gathered a mood board of inspiring examples, you can start to identify your own design tastes and requirements which will allow you to shape and visualise your desired kitchen specifications including colours, textures, materials, furniture style, and layout.
Engage our Intelligent Kitchens design ethos. Looks are important, but throughout your planning journey, think about how you can also design your new kitchen to be as intelligent as possible. A kitchen that’s planned intelligently promises to minimise the strain on your body through everyday use.
Crucially, Hettich’s Intelligent Kitchens concept divides your kitchen into five functional areas. Knowing the different functional areas of your kitchen means you can make more logical decisions about where things are placed on your floorplan – keeping related items within easy reach while allowing for seamless movement between different stages of your workflow.
There are three important objectives to keep in mind when planning an intelligent kitchen:
- Keep distances short. Find a kitchen layout that makes best use of your space and minimises footsteps between frequently used items and appliances.
- Get the ergonomics right. Design your kitchen in a way that will work well with your physique to eliminate strain and discomfort.
- Be smart with storage / staying organised with innovative internal fittings. Maintain a well-ordered kitchen to reduce stress and save time.
Keep distances short with the right kitchen. Preparing food, cooking, and cleaning up are a breeze when you can put your hands on everything you need within a few short steps. But how you achieve this depends on the size and shape of your area as well as your needs and purpose for renovating. By choosing a kitchen layout that works best for you and your space, you’ll be able to better organise your functional areas to suit your typical workflow while realising other benefits such as maximising storage, increasing workspace, and even making room for dining and entertaining.
Get comfortable with ergonomics
Once you’ve decided which layout will work best in your space and you’ve got to grips with he different functional areas, our Intelligent Kitchens concept helps you enhance each area by customising your kitchen to suit you and your specific needs. By introducing ergonomics to your kitchen, you can create a safer, healthier, and more comfortable environment in which to work. Here are the four key themes you should keep in mind when thinking about how to make your kitchen more ergonomic, along with a few ideas for inspiration.
Kitchen workflow
Kitchen tasks typically fall into three main categories including cleaning, cooking, and preparing food – and you’ll probably find yourself crossing between the five functional areas to get jobs done. Think carefully about where your items and appliances need to be to make your kitchen duties safe and efficient.
- Keep distances between oven and benchtop short. Ensures that carrying hot and heavy items between your oven and worksurface is as easy and safe as possible.
- Place utensils and crockery near sink and dishwasher. Minimises any unnecessary and repetitive moving around after washing up when unloading your dishwasher.
- Position food storage and fridge close to cooking and preparation area. Helps avoid back and forth between your fresh food storage, pantry items and work area when progressing through different stages of meal preparation.
- Place pots and pans within reach of food preparation and cooking areas. Helps to avoid back and forth between your fresh food storage, pantry items and work area when progressing through different stages of meal preparation.
- Provide easy access to waste disposal from sink and food preparation. Waste is generated during food preparation and before cleaning up, so finding the perfect spot for disposal will limit your moving around throughout both tasks.
Work zone
There are various areas in a kitchen dedicated to specific tasks which could see you standing in one spot for a long time. To reduce strain on your body and fatigue, make these focus work zones as comfortable as possible by following a few crucial design tactics.
- Position oven at standing height. An in-wall oven suited to your height is safer and reduces strain on your back when checking on your cooking or removing heavy items.
- Install benchtop at height that suits the people who use the kitchen. The ideal height to reduce the risk of back injury is 10-15 centimetres below the height of your bent elbow.
- Store frequently used items at waist height. Avoid too much bending and stretching by placing items such as utensils and pots and pans at waist height and less used items below.
- Create ample lighting. Pendant lights are ideal for adding ambience to small areas like your kitchen island, but recessed LED lights could allow you to work more comfortably and safely on the surrounding worksurfaces.
- Locate power points logically. Stretching chords across appliances and floors is unsafe and inconvenient, so place power points just above open worksurfaces or even under your kitchen island where your kitchen gadgets will be used.
Clearances
With different appliances and multiple people moving around for all kinds of reasons, a lot happens in your kitchen every day and often at the same time. You’ll need to put some careful thought into how you can ensure your kitchen furniture and appliances will operate well together to avoid any injuries, clashes, or bottlenecks in your workflows.
- Use pull-up or sliding doors on cupboards. These are a sleeker alternative to hinged doors which protrude into the surrounding space and can block walkways, obstruct vision, or even cause injury.
- Avoid placing appliances in corners. Fridge doors, oven doors, and dishwasher doors – if placed in a corner – could obstruct storage areas that you might wish to access while unloading the dishwasher or cooking.
- Allow space for multiple kitchen users. Even if it means compromising on a kitchen island or dining table, make sure there’s enough worksurface and floor space for all kitchen users to function and move freely without obstruction.
Smart solutions
Storage – Your kitchen is highly functional area which means you need to make the most of all available space for storage. From ground level to head height and everything in between, think sensibly about where you put things and how they can be most suitably accessed to eliminate strain, discomfort, and unnecessary accidents.
- Swap cupboards for full extension drawers. Instead of bending and reaching for the back of shelves, full extension drawers will give you a clear bird’s eye view from front to back. Deep drawers can also make easy work of handling heavy and bulky items.
- Avoid awkward manoeuvring with stacked pull-out drawers. While maximising storage space, tall pull-out units are accessible from both sides, so you can effortlessly see and access your smallest and most fiddly pantry items or gadgets at once.
- Use easy access wall units for lighter items. Heavy and bulky items are best stored below worksurfaces, but wall units are ideal for lighter items you’d prefer to browse at head height such as glassware. You can also enjoy an unobstructed view of the contents by using sliding or pull-up doors.
- Corner carousels for restrictive tight spots. For efficient use of space in hard-to-access corner units, you can easily see and access items by installing rotating internal shelves.
- Be organised with innovative internal fittings. Hettich offers a range of customisable internal storage solutions to keep items well organised, saving you time and stress looking for things.
When it comes to your kitchen storage choices, there’s a lot at stake. Your storage solutions are what keeps food fresh, they can help you work more efficiently and comfortably, and they can make or break your beautiful interior design goals. Here are some clever storage ideas that’ll make sure your trendy new kitchen looks fantastic and functions like a dream.
Food storage and preparation
Use all your space and keep a clear view, so nothing gets lost or forgotten.
- Secure awkwardly shaped products with the customisable pull-out Cargo IQ. Ideal for delicate or irregularly shaped items like bottles, jars, boxes, and packets, the Cargo IQ enables you to pull your items right out into view with easy two-sided access. You can also match it to your interior design with a choice of surface finishes and even reconfigure the interior for other uses like storing towels and baking trays.
- Full view wall units with folding sliding doors. Opening and closing hinged cupboard doors can slow you down and restrict your view of your essential cooking items. Our WingeLine L gives you folding sliding doors for wall units so you can see everything at once without impacting the surrounding space.
- Drawers built into tall units. Drawers don’t have to stop at waist height. Stacked drawers are ideal for maximising pantry space and keeping items fully visible and well organised. Meanwhile, sections can be pulled out separately for convenience and so you can easily fetch items from drawers above.
- Multi-use pull-outs close to stove top. With Hettich’s smooth Quadro runners, pull-outs with two-sided access will work perfectly for storing frequently used foods near your stove, so you can quickly grab ingredients on the spot. A similar pull-out near your stove but below the worksurface is ideal for storing small appliances exactly where you’re most likely to use them.
- Stow loose or packaged food items securely. There’s nothing more frustrating than food packaging spiling their contents or not being able to quickly locate something you need. Hettich’s customisable organiser systems solve this problem by keeping items firmly in place and in the right order, no matter how big or small they are.
Pots and pans
Save time and enjoy your cooking experiences with a storage system that makes your work easy and saves space.
- Deep drawers on heavy-duty runners. Now, you don’t have to be selective about what you use drawers for. Even your tallest and heaviest pot will fit right in and slide out effortlessly with a heavy-duty deep drawer system – so much easier than pulling it from a cupboard.
- Pan drawer with organiser elements. Forget rummaging around in cluttered cupboards for the pot you need, drawers with organiser elements can make perfect sense fo your pots, pans, and lids as they stay firmly in place and give you a clear bird’s eye view.
- Shallow under oven drawer. No space is unusable with our compact drawer systems. Slim items like baking sheets and trays can be conveniently stored and pulled out from under your oven.
Cleaning agents and waste
Install solutions that make the best use of your kitchen’s most awkward and otherwise unusable areas.
- Pull-out waste bins and recycling. Don’t spoil your sleek interior design with visible kitchen waste. Pull-out bins are perfect for concealing the mess by making us of space under your worksurface.
- Specially designed under-sink drawers. Typically, the space under your sink is cluttered with cleaning products while pipes and fittings obstruct access and your ability to keep things organised. With containers that fit around the plumbing, under-sink drawers make more efficient use of your space while keeping things tidy.
- Stay safe with secure organiser systems. Cleaning products can be dangerous, harmful, and damage your furniture if allowed to spill. Drawers with removable lidded containers and designated spaces are ideal for keeping products out of harm’s way, upright, and securely stowed.
- Extra large drawers. Your cleaning equipment probably includes a few bulky items like a bucket or dustpan and brush – the sorts of things that easily give you immediate access to everything you need.
Cutlery and Crockery
Discover safe and more convenient ways to store your delicate kitchen items than reaching for the cupboard above your head.
- Drawers at or below waist height. To avoid struggling and the risk of falling objects, plates and bowls can be kept in drawers, so you can see everything at once and easily lift them the short distance to your worksurface.
- Wall units with folding or sliding doors. There’s no need to discount using your wall space – especially for lighter items like cups and glasses. Wall units with fully opening folding or sliding doors will play an important role in keeping you and your crockery safe. You could even leave your display open to show off your ware and boost your interior design.
- Divide things up the way you want. Customisable drawer organiser solutions which fit the size of your cutlery and different shapes of your bowls and plates will keep things well ordered and secure, so things never get mixed up.
- Use drawers with variable depths and side panelling. You can feel free to put as much as your want in your drawers – deeper drawers with heavy-duty runners and closed side panels will make easy work of storing tall stacks of plates while keeping them secure during movement.
To download your full guide to planning an intelligent kitchen CLICK HERE!
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