Kitchen Design Unionville: What It Really Takes to Get It Right
If you’re searching for Kitchen Design Unionville, you’re probably staring at a kitchen that doesn’t quite work — maybe it’s dated, cramped, or just weirdly laid out for how you actually cook and live. You know it needs a proper rethink, but you’re not sure where to start or who to trust with what’s likely your home’s most used and most expensive room to renovate. That’s exactly the kind of situation Coco Jelassi, principal designer at Coco Interiors, works through with clients every day.
The short answer for anyone planning a kitchen project in Unionville: a well-designed kitchen in this area needs to balance the neighbourhood’s established aesthetic — often traditional or transitional architecture in mature, tree-lined streets — with how modern families actually cook, entertain, and move through a home. Getting that balance right takes more than picking cabinet colours. It takes a designer who listens first, understands your layout’s constraints, and sweats every detail from the drawer pull hardware to the pendant light height.
Why Unionville Kitchens Have Their Own Design Considerations
Unionville — the historic village within Markham — is one of the GTA’s most charming pockets. The older homes along Main Street and the surrounding residential streets often have original footprints that weren’t designed for contemporary open-concept living. You might be working with a galley-style kitchen that’s been chopped off from the dining room, or a layout where the island everyone wants simply doesn’t fit without moving a wall.
Newer builds in the broader Unionville area, particularly in the Markham communities that have grown up around it, tend toward the opposite problem: big open-plan spaces that feel generic and underdesigned. The bones are there, but the kitchen feels like a showroom rather than a home. Either way, the design challenge is real and specific — and it’s not one you solve with a template.
What Good Kitchen Design Actually Involves (Most People Don’t Know This)
Here’s what surprises a lot of homeowners: a kitchen redesign isn’t primarily about aesthetics. It’s about workflow, storage logic, and how the space connects to the rest of the home. The look comes after those fundamentals are solved — not before.
Layout: The Decision That Affects Everything Else
The classic kitchen work triangle — fridge, sink, stove — is still a useful starting point, but it’s been largely replaced by the concept of work zones. Coco Jelassi approaches every kitchen by mapping out how the client actually uses the space. Does one person cook while another manages homework at the island? Do you host frequently, meaning you need a second prep zone so guests aren’t in the way? Are you a serious home baker who needs a dedicated counter height for pastry work?
These aren’t abstract questions. They determine whether an island makes sense (and how big), where the refrigerator should actually live, and whether a butler’s pantry or a hidden prep kitchen is worth carving out. In Unionville’s older homes especially, this often means having an honest conversation about whether a wall comes down — and what that costs structurally versus what it gains functionally.
Storage: Where Most Kitchen Designs Fail
Cabinet quantity is not the same as storage quality. Coco has seen kitchens with floor-to-ceiling cabinetry that still feel chaotic because the interior organisation hasn’t been thought through. She designs storage around specific items — your stand mixer, your Le Creuset collection, your spice habit — rather than defaulting to standard shelf heights that don’t actually fit what you own.
- Deep drawers instead of lower cabinet doors (you’ll never go back once you try them)
- Pull-out pantry columns for narrow spaces that would otherwise be dead zones
- Appliance garages with power outlets so your counters stay clear
- Custom dividers inside drawers for cutlery, wraps, and utensils that actually fit
These details cost almost nothing extra when planned from the start. They’re expensive to retrofit later.
Materials: Choosing for Beauty and Reality
Quartz versus marble versus quartzite. Shaker versus slab versus inset cabinetry. These choices feel overwhelming, but they become much clearer when you’re choosing for your actual life, not a magazine spread. Coco’s approach through her full interior design service is to walk clients through material samples in their own home, under their own lighting, against their existing floors — because the same slab can look completely different in a north-facing Unionville kitchen versus a south-facing one.
A few honest material notes:
- Honed marble is gorgeous and ages beautifully, but it marks. If you’re cooking daily and don’t want to think about it, a quality quartzite or durable quartz is more forgiving.
- Painted wood cabinetry shows wear at edges over time. If longevity matters, discuss a factory-finished or thermofoil option for high-traffic areas.
- Wide-plank hardwood flowing from the adjacent room into the kitchen creates visual continuity that makes smaller spaces feel larger — a trick worth considering in older Unionville homes.
Lighting: The Most Underestimated Layer
Bad kitchen lighting is one of the most common complaints Coco hears from clients who’ve renovated without a designer. People spend tens of thousands on beautiful cabinetry and then light the whole thing with a single pot light grid that casts shadows exactly where you’re trying to chop vegetables.
A proper kitchen lighting plan has at least three layers: task lighting (under-cabinet LEDs over every work surface), ambient lighting (recessed or flush ceiling fixtures), and decorative lighting (pendants over an island or dining area that bring personality and warmth). Getting this right is part of what Coco’s interior architecture work addresses — the electrical plan needs to be locked in before walls close, not improvised later.
Common Mistakes Homeowners Make in Kitchen Renovations
These come up again and again in the GTA, and Unionville is no exception.
- Designing for resale instead of life. Choosing “safe” finishes because you might sell in five years means living with a kitchen you don’t love. A well-designed, personalized kitchen actually sells better than a generic one anyway.
- Skipping the ventilation conversation. A beautiful range hood that’s undersized for your cooktop is a ventilation failure. This affects air quality, cooking performance, and cabinetry longevity above the stove.
- Forgetting the triangle between the kitchen and the rest of the home. How does the kitchen connect to the dining room? The backyard? The mudroom? These circulation paths affect how the kitchen feels even when you’re standing in it.
- Choosing an island size based on looks, not clearance. Building code in Ontario requires minimum 42 inches of clearance around a working island — 48 inches if two people are cooking. Many homeowners go too big and end up with a bottleneck.
- Making all decisions alone. A kitchen renovation involves a contractor, a cabinet maker, an electrician, a plumber, and often a structural engineer. Without a designer coordinating all of them, details fall through the cracks — and those cracks are expensive.
How Coco Jelassi Actually Works With Kitchen Clients
This is where Coco Interiors is genuinely different, and it’s worth being specific about why. Coco deliberately keeps a small client roster. She’s not running a firm where a junior designer does your project and she reviews it at the end. When you hire Coco, you work with Coco — from the first site visit through to the final installation walkthrough.
Her process starts with a listening session that goes well beyond “what’s your style?” She wants to know how many people cook at once, whether you’re left- or right-handed (it affects which side the fridge opens), whether you prefer to entertain formally or casually, and what’s driven you crazy about your current kitchen for the last five years. That information shapes every decision that follows.
She then develops a design concept — space planning, material palette, lighting plan, and finish selections — that’s presented with enough detail that you can actually visualize it, not just imagine it. Revisions are collaborative, not defensive. And when the project moves into execution, Coco coordinates with your contractor and trades so the design intent doesn’t get lost in translation on site.
For homeowners in Unionville and across Markham, this level of access to the designer themselves is genuinely rare. Most studios this far into the GTA either send a rep or manage the project remotely. Coco is on site. That matters when a cabinet maker has a question about the reveal on a custom panel, or when a tile supplier suddenly can’t deliver and a substitution decision needs to happen fast.
You can learn more about her background and design philosophy on her about page, and she’s also active on LinkedIn if you want to see the kind of work she’s doing in her own words.
What to Expect in Terms of Process and Timeline
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Frequently Asked Questions
How is designing a kitchen in Unionville's older homes different from a typical renovation?
Older Unionville homes often have original footprints that weren't built for open-concept living, so you're frequently dealing with chopped-off layouts or walls that need to come down to get the space you want. That means the design process has to start with an honest structural conversation, not just a mood board. It's a different kind of problem-solving than working with a newer build.
Why does kitchen design need to start with layout and workflow instead of just picking finishes?
Because if the layout doesn't match how you actually cook and move through the space, no amount of beautiful cabinetry fixes it. A designer worth hiring will ask you things like whether two people cook at once or whether you bake seriously, because those answers change where everything goes. The look comes after the fundamentals are sorted.
What's the real difference between cabinet quantity and storage quality?
You can have floor-to-ceiling cabinets and still have a chaotic kitchen if the interior isn't designed around what you actually own. Things like deep drawers instead of lower cabinet doors, pull-out pantry columns, and custom dividers cost almost nothing when planned upfront but are expensive to add later.
How do I choose between quartz, quartzite, and marble for countertops?
It really comes down to how you cook and how much you want to think about maintenance. Honed marble is beautiful but it marks, so if you're cooking daily and don't want to worry about it, a quality quartzite or durable quartz is more forgiving. Seeing samples in your actual kitchen under your own lighting makes a huge difference in the decision.
Why does kitchen lighting matter so much if I'm already spending on cabinetry and finishes?
Because bad lighting can make expensive cabinetry look flat and cast shadows exactly where you're trying to prep food. You need at least three layers — task lighting under cabinets, ambient ceiling fixtures, and decorative pendants — and the electrical plan has to be locked in before walls close, not figured out afterward.
What are the most common mistakes homeowners make in kitchen renovations?
Designing for a hypothetical future buyer instead of your actual life, picking an island that's too big for the clearance you have, and skipping a serious ventilation conversation are the big ones. Making all the decisions without someone coordinating the contractor, cabinet maker, electrician, and plumber is also where a lot of expensive details fall through the cracks.
What does working with Coco Jelassi actually look like day to day?
You work directly with Coco from the first site visit through final installation, not a junior designer who reports back to her. She starts with a detailed listening session about how you cook and what's driven you crazy about your current kitchen, then develops a full concept including space planning, materials, and lighting that you can actually visualize. When the project is in execution, she's on site coordinating trades so the design intent doesn't get lost.