5 Kitchen Design Tips from a House With 4 Kitchens

What’s better than a house with one great kitchen? A house with four, obviously.

“One of the most common questions we’ve been asked about this home is if the house has four kitchens,” laughs Alanna Dunn, a senior designer at Calgary firm Reena Sotropa In House Design Group, who helped tackle the design of an ultra-luxe, 8,761-square-foot, six-bedroom custom estate for developer Maillot Homes. While the short answer to the kitchen-count query would be ‘yes,’ the truth is slightly more nuanced than that: there’s one formal kitchen, one pantry kitchen, one butler’s kitchen and a bar kitchen.

But whatever way you slice it, there’s plenty of room here to cook up a storm. Here are our biggest design lessons from this unique, multi-kitchen home.

1. Get splashy with the backsplash

In the main kitchen, stone has been installed with a unusual sloping, scalloped edge, drawing the eye upward to the industrial-glam custom hood vent.

2. Storage can be beautiful

In the butler’s kitchen, there are dozens of cabinets and drawers for storage. But while it’s a highly functional space, this area still gets a hit of glamour thanks to refined gold hardware and crisp white countertops.

3. Pair punchy, patterned tile with soothing neutral millwork

The cool matte grey cabinetry is a modern, neutral contrast to the ornate counter-to-ceiling tile-work in the secondary kitchen.

4. Shake up the lighting

Pendant lights and cabinet underlights are the usual go-tos in kitchen design, but here, the Reena Sotropa team employed gold sconces, too, to add another sophisticated layer of light.

5. Magnify light with a mirror
In the bar, mirrored panels act as a backsplash to help amplify the light (and help your favourite home-barflies catch the game via the reflected TV).

Photos by Phil Crozier.