Get to Know Kitchen Faucets

Your water faucet is probably the most important fixture in your kitchen. Filling pots, washing dishes, and cleaning off and preparing meat and vegetables all happen at the sink. Faucet design and supply companies, like industry heavy Moen faucets, realize this fact and have stepped up to the plate in creating a number of cutting edge faucet designs to fit any homeowner’s fancy.

One Handle or Two?

At the most basic level, you’ll need to decide between two types of delivery systems: single handle and double handle faucets. For a kitchen, single handle faucets are hands down the best choice. Why? Because when you’re cooking a meal you don’t always have two hands to work the handles. In fact sometimes you don’t even have one. Having a faucet you can turn on and adjust with your elbow or a free hand is going to save you a lot of time and frustration. About the only exceptions here are if you live in a historic home, or if your kitchen design harkens back to an earlier age. In that case, a double handle faucet might be a better match from an aesthetic standpoint.

Faucet Height

Once you’ve settled on a handle style, your next decision is regarding faucet height. Beware of cheap faucets that barely rise from the height of your sink. It will make everything from washing your hands to filling pots a chore, since you’ll need to lean in and down to get anything done. Take a hint from one of the leading designers. Moen faucets are almost exclusively built with high, arched faucets, for example. Generally where kitchens are concerned, the higher the spout the better.

From Here, Enjoy the Possibilities

Having made your decision about handle style and height, the rest of the choices you have when it comes to kitchen faucets are all about the luxuries. As mentioned before, companies like Delta and
Moen faucets are focused on meeting your every need with a number of innovative faucet features to make your kitchen experience as easy as possible. Here’s just a few to get you thinking about the possibilities.

• Pull Down Spouts: When it comes to flexible hose sprayers, the traditional design with the sprayer set off to the right is old hat. New faucets, such as Moen kitchen faucets, increasingly have pull down spouts, meaning the spout detaches from the faucet, flexible hose in tow, and can be used however you like. This is an important feature, because it makes room for other additions to your sink that the old set up doesn’t.
• Water Filtration Systems: Many faucets now come with a separate spout attached to a water filtration system. For homeowners concerned with water quality, these are wonderful options since they put pure, filtered water right at your fingertips.
• Vegetable Sprayers: Adding one of these sprayers to your faucet system is nice for cleaning off fruits and vegetables, as well as getting to those hard to reach spots in dirty pots and pans.
• Lotion and Soap Dispensers: If you’re going to have a soap dispenser at the ready anyway, why not get rid of that ugly plastic bottle and incorporate your soap or lotion dispenser into your greater kitchen faucet design?
• Pot Fillers: These are some of the coolest innovations in faucet design. Faucet designers like Moen kitchen faucets finally realized that lugging around pots full of water is the worst job in the kitchen short of cleaning up. So why not install a separate faucet over the stove to cut those trips out of the equation? Pot filling faucets are built with multiple hinges so they can swing out over any burner, and be pushed back against the wall and out of the way again when you’re finished using them.

Talk to a plumber or faucet supplier about which type of faucet is going to be best for you and about getting it installed. Your sink will dictate to some extent how many design features you can add, and as faucet design has gotten more complicated (pot fillers, water purifiers, etc.) so has their installation. Hiring your job out to an experienced professional is the best way to ensure everything will run smoothly when you turn on the water to your new kitchen faucet.

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