Cozy and Functional Kitchen in a Standard Panel House

Designer Irina Dolganova updated the outdated interior in a two-room apartment in a standard panel house. Relocation was impossible due to load-bearing walls, so the kitchen remained isolated. The task was to refresh the renovation, choose a new cabinet color, and arrange a dining area from which no one would want to leave.

Kitchen before renovation:

The furniture layout on the kitchen matches the previous one. But a GKL box was added to make this part of the kitchen look more harmonious.

Photo: in style , Kitchen and Dining Room, Modern, Project of the Week, Irina Dolganova – photo on our website

"We saved on furniture — we kept the lower drawers from the old kitchen, replacing only the fronts. By the way, we also kept the countertop from the old kitchen: all colors of the new interior were chosen to complement its color. The fronts are made of HDF with enamel finish. There are no expensive features like pull-out cabinets in the cabinet — the goal was to make a beautiful kitchen in an interesting blue color, but save as much as possible," — shares the designer.

For the backsplash, we chose small-format tiles. They look stylish, are easy to lay out, and add dynamism to minimalist fronts.

Ceiling cornices and trim were painted in a deep gray tone — they make the interior more interesting and support the gray glass shades above the dining table.

Three paintings hang on the kitchen wall, including images of Harlequin and Columbine, which are sketches by Alexander Benois for a 1915 ballet. "The pictures found by the client were in poor quality. So I found a painter who redrawn them for our project. The entire interior and color scheme were built around these images," — says Irina Dolganova.