Designing Outdoor Kitchens & Seating

Outdoor Kitchens and the new eating out.

There’s been a huge surge in interest in creating wonderful outside spaces for eating, entertaining and relaxing. And having a full facility in your outdoor space without having to keep going back and forth in preparing and serving a meal certainly does enhance the experience. There is something wonderful about cooking and eating in the open air, especially with a design that works intuitively and enhances social interaction.

Our in-house Landscapes Team are being asked more and more to create a sophisticated food preparation and cooking area into their outside designs, together with outdoor sofa and seating spaces with a centre piece fire-pit to extend time outside late into the evenings.

We’ve teamed up with Kitchen Architecture, one of the leading kitchen designers in the country who are known for their iconic and individual kitchen living spaces and whose clients include Heston Blumenthal and Cherie Blair, for some inspiration in planning and designing an outdoor kitchen.

As with any Landscape Design project, it starts with the concept, taking into the account the lifestyle and needs of the clients together with the flow of the space and how it links with the entrance into the home and any patios, lawns, walkways or gardens.

There are many options as to the type of integrated or free-standing units to optimise the cooking experience, including grills, burners, wood-burner pizza ovens, and on the food preparation side, fridges, sink units, dishwasher and plenty of storage – all of which come together to be themselves design features.

An outdoor kitchen design must also consider the dining area – from high tables and stools to the more traditional garden table.   Planters with lavender, pots holding herbs and potted trees such as Olive, Bonsais or Palms all create a stylish, Mediterranean feel against a range of patio and paving stones.  Aluminium, stone, timber and even marble can be chosen as materials to create both functional and beautiful design.

We recently completed the design of an outdoor kitchen and seating area for a young family in north London, constructed to a very high standard by The Secret Landscape Company. The brief was to design an area slightly away from the lawn and children’s play areas, with a beautiful central ceramic fire pit, and alongside an outdoor kitchen BBQ, pizza oven and bar stools.

What’s next?

We provide Landscape Design services, together with Architectural and Interior Design, throughout London, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and the Cotswolds. We’d love to help you plan your dream project.  Find out more about how we work or get in touch for an initial conversation.

See one of our recent Landscape design projects creating a beautifully calm and tranquil oasis around a Buckinghamshire family home.