Rooms for improvement

Sometimes you need to experience the wrong way of doing something to appreciate the right way of doing it. Take, for example, some of the many poorly designed kitchens I've seen in my life. Some of them feel like they were designed by a person who was dared to design kitchens that forced two people to bump into each other as much as possible.

I've seen plenty of poorly designed bathrooms as well. How about my friend's master bathroom which he finds impossible to enter or exit without bumping into his wife who is brushing her teeth? Clearly, the people who designed these spaces did not have formal training in kitchen and bathroom design. And it's also obvious to me professional kitchen and bathroom designers are not being used on these production home projects.

What about custom home designers and builders? Are they using professional kitchen and bathroom designers? Results of an online survey we conducted say no; only 10 percent use kitchen and bathroom designers while more than 85 percent design kitchens and bathrooms themselves. Yet, the kitchens and bathrooms they design that I've seen function much better and are more beautiful than the production home examples. No doubt. Still, I believe there's always room for improvement.

It is with this spirit of improvement that Residential Design & Build magazine is partnering with the National Kitchen & Bath Association to publish the NKBA Education Series of articles that include kitchen and bathroom specification and planning guidelines. Beginning with pg. 84 of this issue and throughout 2008, we will publish two pages of educational editorial excerpted from the NKBA Professional Resource Library, followed by several new products related to each month's topic. The NKBA Professional Resource Library is a series of nine textbooks written, edited and approved by kitchen and bathroom industry experts.

As a bonus, an extra 16-page section titled "Designing Better Kitchens & Baths" appears in this issue beginning on page 33. It contains NKBA editorial focusing on space requirements and product selection pointers for builders, architects and designers wanting to improve the design and functionality of the kitchens and bathrooms in their custom homes.

RDB magazine is proud to partner with NKBA, and happy to deliver such valuable educational material to RDB readers. The goal is to design the best possible kitchens and bathrooms for your clients, and we're excited to help.