One Room Challenge: Week 2
Grace
October 10, 2019
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I had heard only about frustrations with it, but was happily surprised when I got started with it!
I also found myself wanting to think through every single drawer. How could I get hidden drawers inside of my drawers? Could I add a drawer inside my cabinet? My questions about Ikea flexibility were basically endless, so that brings me to this brief walk through of how to use the Home Planner to figure out your dream interior of a drawer or cabinet.
Navigate to the Ikea home planner and click “Create New Design”.
The first screen when you open a new design will look like this. You can layout your entire kitchen and specify your dimensions and customize the appearance of your room, but for the sake of this tutorial I’ll just add one cabinet.
On the left side column, there is a drop down for Kitchen & Appliances. Open the Kitchen Cabinets tab and choose the size you need. You can also narrow down if you’re looking for drawers, doors, or another variation.
Below the room, all of the options that fit your criteria will appear in a carousel. You can hover over each of them for a short description and a larger view. I selected the 30x24x90 cabinet with 4 drawers. It automatically drops into the room when you click it.
The default top down view is great for making an initial layout, but if you’re just here to see exactly what’s going on with the inside of the cabinet, you’ll want to toggle to 3D Line View (the cube icon), and then click Open Item (the open box icon). This will open your cabinet so you can see exactly what is inside it. The Front 3D View (shaded cube icon box) is also a great way to view when your cabinets are open.
If you want to customize the appearance of your cabinets, it is best to toggle to Front 3D View (shaded cube icon box). In the right side column you can select the fronts, handles, etc. I like this view for selecting the interior fittings as well.
To customize the exterior of the cabinet further, you can go to Customize on the right side column and then Style. That will bring up countless options of possible door/drawer combinations. My recommendation is to choose your favorite for aesthetics because you’ll be able to add all sorts of drawers and things in the next step!
The options on the left will change based on the style of your cabinet, but the functionality is typically the same. Select each potion (in my case, Top Double Door) and then click Inside.
The interior fittings are organized from top of your cabinet to the bottom of the cabinet. I clicked through every single one to explore each option and play around with the possibilities. The great thing about the Ikea Home Planner is that they will not let you choose something that won’t be possible to do.
The same method applies for the drawers. From Customize, click down to Drawer and then Inside. You’ll be able to explore options for interior fittings in drawers from there. You can also add lighting in this section. Lighting is something I skipped in our kitchen, and I already know I am going to want to add some soon.
When you’re happy with your drawer/cabinet configuration, click the Item list/Total price button in the top left corner. You’ll get a list that looks something like this.
If you’re purchasing your fronts with Ikea, you’re good to put your order in. If you’re purchasing fronts with a different cabinet front maker, you’ll still want to export your plan with the doors so you know what sizes you need from your chosen front maker. You’ll also want an additional item list without the fronts to submit to Ikea.
The quickest way to remove all of the fronts is to navigate to Kitchen – Change All at once on the left panel. Click Fronts, and then look at the bottom carousel and tab all the way over to the far right. Click No Front > Apply to all.
After you’ve removed all fronts, you can export another Item list/Total price with the button in the top right. You’ll be able to order all of these items directly through Ikea in tandem with your cabinet front order to create your complete kitchen. I would recommend cross checking both lists. We specifically had an issue with a drawer mechanism being removed along with the cabinet face for our pull out style cabinets. I didn’t come across that issue anywhere else, but it’s definitely worth double checking!
Happy kitchen designing! If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out and ask!
This post was written for the Collected Eclectic blog.
Collected Eclectic was a passion project focused on recording the process as Grace and Michael van Meurer transformed their builder grade home in to something special.
124 blog posts were published between 2018 and 2021. Explore the complete Collected Eclectic archive here.
Learn more about the project here.