Designing your kitchen can be exciting and daunting at the same time. There’s a lot of money to be spent on a kitchen and it needs to be well spent, especially when it should be lasting you a few years or so! The kitchen is often referred to as the heart of the home and it’s unsurprising when you consider how much time you spend there preparing three meals a day, making cups of coffee for friends and helping the children with homework fuelled by snacks from the fridge. With big decisions about the best worktop material to be used, have you considered oak as the material for your new worktops? Read on to find out the pros and cons of oak.
Pros
Oak is a timeless material that should complement the majority of kitchens. It oozes charm, solidity and stability – it’s a wood you can rely on to be tough and durable. Oak is also less expensive than a wood such as walnut. Although it will depend on the look you prefer, oak offers an attractive and stylish finish. It is easily distinguishable from other woods and offers a complementary finish to most kitchens. Like a good wine, oak also gets better with age. The more it is used, the more the wood has a story to tell and, with maintenance, will keep on telling a beautiful story in your home to visitors. As with other woods, it is hygienic as it is composed of natural antibacterial properties that lends itself to food preparation surfaces. You can rest assured that preparing food on oak will be both clean and safe.
Cons
While oak is tough and durable, scratches can occur on wood. To avoid this, simply use chopping boards to prepare food on, rather than cutting directly on top of it. Similarly, wood is possible to scorch by placing hot pans directly onto it. Avoid this by putting pans on a trivet or a chopping board. Don’t worry if you do get a scorch, though, you can remove this by lightly sanding and oiling your worktop. Equally, regularly oiling your worktop will be essential to avoid bacteria growing easily. This may seem time-consuming, but it is relatively easy to do and arguably worth it for the finish that oak offers. Re-sealing your worktop will also avoid black marks and swelling when you spill liquids on it.
Is oak right for you?
Only you can really answer this, but in order to get the right worktop for yourself, make sure you check out the quality of the wood you are buying and its durability. As long as you are willing to treat your worktop well and maintain it, there is no reason why it shouldn’t continue to have the ‘wow’ factor in your kitchen for years to come, but you need to be sure that you have the time to devote to looking after it properly from time-to-time. There’s no escaping the fact that oak offers luxury and an aesthetically pleasing finish, so it should be money well spent if this is the look you’re after.