This colour has been voted as the happiest to paint your kitchen

A kitchen is the heart of the home, however, we can now reveal the happiest kitchen colour and the features that can take your space up a notch to make it the ultimate happy home.

Research by kitchen retailer Magnet found that when it comes to kitchen ideas, white is the ultimate happy kitchen colour scheme. Following a survey of 2,000 homeowners in the UK, it was revealed that 1 in 6 people believed that a crisp white kitchen would bring them more joy.

However, the happiness doesn't stop with opening the white kitchen ideas tab. The survey found that the perfect kitchen layout for boosting joy included a kitchen island. A third of people surveyed said that this style layout was the ultimate choice for a happy kitchen.

Open-plan kitchen ideas also proved a popular choice. Despite this style of layout slipping in popularity among homeowners during the pandemic, it remained a popular choice for inducing happiness. 1 in 5 people opted for this style of layout for their ideal happy home.

So you've nailed the colour and layout of your kitchen, but what about the other kitchen features? Walk-in pantries jumped to the top of the list as the kitchen feature that would make people the happiest with 15 percent of the vote. 

However, it seems the walk-in pantry isn't valued equally by everyone. Opinion was divided down gender lines, with only 1 in 10 men choosing it as their happiest feature, compared to 1 in 5 women. We'll choose not to make any assumptions based on this evidence...

The walk-in pantry was closely followed by an American-style fridge freezer with 14 per cent of votes, and then a coffee machine. If you can't resist a caffeine fix in the morning one of these best coffee machines could be the shortcut to your happiest kitchen to date.

Surprisingly, the study found that a large kitchen didn't automatically equal a happy one. In fact, a small kitchen could potentially be seen as happier as long as it is practical and organised.  Two-thirds of the study agreed that practicality and organisation were more important than the size of a kitchen, with ample storage being voted the most important factor.

'Lockdown has changed how we live and the way in which we interact with our home spaces,' explains Hayley Simmons, Director of Commercial Range at Magnet. 'A well designed, functional space that makes for an organised, happy home is now more desirable than size, with only 11% of people choosing size as their most important consideration.'

'This insightful new research brings to light just how consumer behaviour is shifting, and how priorities have changed.'

So the recipe for the ideal happy kitchen: white colour scheme, kitchen island, walk-in pantry, American fridge-freezer and a coffee machine. We'll leave you fantasising about that.