How to choose the ideal cooker hood for your kitchen
ElectroExpert How can you choose the best cooker hood for your kitchen? Get the best advice and shopping tips for choosing the right kitchen cooker hood for your needs. Below you will find a shopping guide helping you get the most of your kitchen cooker hood.
It’s hard to imagine a modern kitchen without a cooker hood. During cooking, the kitchen is filled with steam, smoke, wet air or unpleasant cooking odors.
These aspects become all the more unpleasant both in summer when the heat is suffocating and the kitchen should have fresh air as well as during the cold season when you have to open the window to air it that means the outside frost to invade the kitchen space .
All these inconveniences are easily solved by purchasing a kitchen hood. The ideal cooker hood contributes to both the appearance and the cleanliness of the kitchen, avoiding oily deposits and smoking the walls or furniture and is beneficial for our health after all. It is not healthy to stay in a room full of steam or smoke.
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How to choose the best cooker hood
Of course, choosing the kitchen hood is the same as with all household appliances: according to individual needs. You have to keep in mind a few important criteria when you are looking to buy the best cooker hood.
Hoods can operate on two principles: air filtration and recirculation or air exhaust. Each of the two types of cooker hood has its advantages and disadvantages.
There are also mixed operation cooker hoods that combine both principles of operation and can be used according to the need of the moment.
Types of cooker hoods
Air recirculation cooker hood
The air recirculation cooker hood does not permanently remove the air from the kitchen but recirculates it after it is filtered, as the name says. The advantages of such a hood are that you are not conditioned by fitting the cooker as close as possible to an outside wall or by having outside walls.
It also mounts easily and quickly anywhere. Instead, the disadvantages of a recirculating hood are numerous. The hood filter needs to be changed quite often depending on how much the hood is used, generating a high maintenance cost.
The odors are eliminated only partially, the air being filtered and not permanently discharged, and the heat is not removed from the room.
Air evacuation cooker hood
The kitchen hood with the air outlet was put on the market before the filter with air recirculation. Such a hood has a much better advantage/drawback ratio than the filter hood.
While a filter hood can be mounted anywhere, the exhaust hood requires a way of communicating with the outside so that the air can be evacuated.
Another great disadvantage of the evacuation hood is that during winter it cools the kitchen air during its operation. But no matter how unpleasant it is to cool the room during the winter, so useful is the evacuation of hot air during the summer and the maintenance of an adequate temperature.
The ability to remove smoke, steam or odors is much higher than the air recirculation filter hood, making it useful within certain limits even without the fan being switched on.
Mixed type cooker hood
Mixed kitchen hoods are a combination of the two types of hoods we talked about with exhaustion and filtration. With a simple push of a button, you can switch from filtering to recirculation of the final exhaust air.
The hood combines the advantages of both types of hood, but not the drawbacks, thus offering great flexibility in how to use it.
For example, in the winter you can use the filter function to prevent the frost from entering the room, while in the summer you can use the air exhaust function to remove heat and keep the air fresh.
Design and functionality
Dimensions
Dimensions are an important feature of a kitchen hood, along with its design. Size matters not only for the aesthetic aspect but also for functionality and efficiency.
The size of the hood should be at least as large as that of the cooking appliance, and the ideal size would be even a few centimeters higher.
The dimensions vary greatly depending on the needs, from the smallest hotels to the island-type industrial used in the kitchens of the restaurants, for which I can not say that there is an ideal size.
Of course, the size of the hood along with other criteria has an important say in terms of efficiency.
Design
Regarding the design side, the hoods have advanced a lot in recent years.
The hoods are made of different materials, from sheet metal to glass or even glass.
The design offer is very extensive, from classic to retro or minimalist models. It’s impossible not to find anything to suit your taste or in tune with your kitchen furniture.
Cooker hood lighting
Hood lighting is an important aspect both in design and utility. The most cooker hoods are providing light using a neon or two light bulbs.
The latest hood models illuminate the cooking surface with LED systems or other types of spotlights. Keep in mind that light sources must be strong enough and well distributed so that the cooking surface is illuminated as well and as evenly as possible.
Telescopic cooker hoods
Telescopic cooker hoods are hoods with retractable elements made for easier integration into furniture or for better aesthetics. Telescopic hoods are generally smaller in the rest position and during operation the telescopic elements increase the depth of the hood for better efficiency.
Now that we’ve covered the design, let’s talk about the technical characteristics of a kitchen hood. The capacity, filter type and number of engines your hood has are some of the most important features to check when purchasing.
Technical specifications
Capacity of a cooker hood
The capacity of a kitchen hood refers to cubic meters of air that are evacuated or filtered in an hour. Experts recommend that at least ten air exchanges be made in one hour, so by a simple calculation, the capacity of the best kitchen hood should be at least ten times the volume of the kitchen where it will be installed. The higher the capacity of the hood, the better the ventilation of the space.
All cooker hoods have adjustable capacity depending on the number of speeds. It is good to choose a hood with a maximum number of speeds so it will not always be used at full capacity. The more the hood has a more adjustable capacity, the longer the life will increase and the noise produced will be reduced.
Noise level
Considering that you will spend the vast majority of the operating time of the hood right next to it, the noise level is another factor to keep in mind. The noise produced by a cooker hood can generally be between 40 and 75 decibels.
It should be said that the price will be inversely proportional to the noise level of the hood, a hood with a low noise level will have a higher price and vice versa. Calculate your budget and choose the hood that fits your needs.
Hood filters
Hood filters are the ones that retain the fat from the filtered steam. Grease that would otherwise lie on the kitchen walls and inside the hood, reducing his lifetime. Not all hoods benefit from such a filter, but it is good to choose a filtering hood when making a purchase. Filters can be of more than one type: disposable, washable or ionic.
- Disposable filters can not be cleaned and must be changed one to two months depending on the operating times of the hood. These filters are generally made of paper or synthetic materials.
- Washable filters are metallic, generally aluminum, and can be cleaned without the need for replacement. They generally have to be washed once a month, more often or less, as needed. Such filters bend very easily, so be careful not to damage them during washing.
- Ion filtration is the latest technology in the industry. Ion filters deal with the negative ionization of recirculated air. By this negative ionization, the efficiency of the hood in eliminating smells is enhanced, eliminating at the same time microbes or viruses in the air, keeping it much fresher. Some hoods even have the air refresh function, which is used outside the cooking time simply to have cleaner air in the room.
Cooker hood engines
The number of hood engines is not as important as it would be. This technical specification manages to fool many buyers.
Kitchen hoods can have one or two engines. Two engines do not automatically mean greater efficiency. Of a two-engine hood and a single-engine hood, at the same capacity, the one-engine cooker hood will always be much quieter. Study this attentively when purchasing.
Price
The price of a simple cooker hood starts somewhere from 30-40 £ and can even reach up to 2-3000 £ for the most demanding customers. Carefully weigh all the pluses and minuses shown for each type of hood and choose the hood that matches your needs and the kitchen where it is to be fitted.
Recommended cooker hoods
We chose some recommended models of kitchen cooker hoods that combine a pleasant look with a quality/price ratio as great as possible.
- High extraction rate
- Low noise level
- Easy to install
- Flexible dual ventilation
- Full 12 months manufacturer's guarantee
- High extraction rate
- Low noise level
- Two ways of installation: used as Undercabinet hoods, installed under your cabinets or cupboards; be a wall-mounted chimney hood like other kitchen cooker hoods..
- Flexible dual ventilationc
- 12-month Warranty: please contact our tech support team when you need our assistance with our kitchen range hoods. Great pleasure to offer you the best service.
- Three speed front control settings
- Flexible installation with top or rear duct assembly
- Easy to use push button operation and low noise level
- Use with metal and aluminium grease filters
- Comes with 2 year warranty which can be registered online
