Wireless Charging Kitchen Countertops
Kitchen Charging Station Ideas – How about a wireless one?
May
If you’re redesigning a kitchen at the moment where does a kitchen charging station fall into your list of design priorities?
It’s highly likely your lifestyle and behavior has gone through massive changes since the last time you designed a kitchen (if you have before) or how the last kitchen you’re in was designed to be used. The biggest of these changes is most likely our interaction and all-day reliance on smart phones to stay ‘connected’ to each other.
Given how much time we’ve always spent in our kitchens and the new importance of smart phones in today’s society, kitchen’s are also being asked to act as the charging station hubs to the home putting a bigger constraint on the space available to both cook and digitally recharge. The result today is usually a mishmash of kitchen appliances, gadget baskets, tech trays, adapters and wires that leave us with less countertop space and a stress of a cluttered kitchen.
To get away from this chaos, there are number of solutions in the market include charging drawers, plug towers and multi plug adapters, USB hubs with multiple wires hanging out like these:
What’s wrong with these kitchen charging stations ideas?
There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with these solutions and they all have their benefits in how they work but they can also pose new problems that:
- Take up space on your countertops
- Use up your wall plug sockets
- Distract from the design and finish of your kitchen.
- Build up dirt and grime over time (for plug towers)
- Require you to sacrifice a drawer (for charging drawers)
A new and exciting solution is to go wireless with your charging needs!
Watch on to see how that works:
Advised routing installation method for all countertops, surfaces to ensure best results and compatibility
A hidden kitchen charging station for countertops
Using your countertops to create a hidden kitchen charging station through wireless charging is fast becoming an easy and viable solution your fabricator or kitchen retailer can offer you using a Kew Labs UTS-1 Invisible Wireless Charger. Once installed, simply place the phone on the countertop when you’re not using it and you’re always getting a charge!
Utilising your countertop as a wireless charging countertop compared to other options allows you to:
- Hide your wires and adapters,
- Free up your plug sockets
- Keep your phone visible compared to a charging drawer
- No hinges and moving parts like a plug socket power means it stay’s dirt and grime free
- Stop other family members sealing your chargers
- Avoids wear and tear on your phone’s connector ports.
A wireless charging countertop powered by Kew Labs
How do I plan for adding wireless charging to my countertops?
We’ve already written a great guide on things to think about as you begin to plan on adding hidden wireless charging to your countertops which you can read on here:
We’ll work with your kitchen or countertop providers
Kew Labs can work directly with your builder, fabricator or kitchen shop to ensure your countertops are prepared to our specification for wireless charging. Introduce us through an email to info@kewlabstech.co and we’ll handle the rest.
What countertops materials can I add wireless charging to?
Kew Lab’s UTS-1 wireless charger is safe to use on all non-metallic materials meaning quartz, marble, granite, laminate and wood are all ideal materials for our chargers. We’ve been testing our chargers with all the big brands on the market like Dekton, Silestone, Cambria, Inalco and Caesarstone to make sure our chargers work exactly as they’re supposed to.
What’s required?
- A mains plug point -(daisy chaining 2 chargers only requires 1 plug point)
- some air ventilation – kitchen carcasses will need to have an area cut out to provide suitable ventilation.
- Correct surface thickness – We recommend asking your countertop provider to reduce the surface thickness to 10mm or work towards our ‘thin’ distance (0.39″-0.66″ 10-17mm) specification to achieve best charging results. Kew Labs can also work directly with your provider to ensure this runs smoothly.
If you are not remodelling your kitchen, our chargers can be installed under countertops that are 1” or less, however iPhone 12 and Airpod’s with wireless charging will need to be installed in areas under 0.8”.
Advised routing installation method for all countertops, surfaces to ensure best results and compatibility