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Swedish interior designer Mikael Berryman has worked for IKEA since 1998, completing stints in Sweden and New York, China and Russia. He is now IKEA UK & Ireland’s interior design expert and lives in Hampstead. The designer reveals his signature Swedish dish, a highly efficient recycling effort, and why you might find shoes in his kitchen cupboard….

A kitchen should fit your needs and personality… whoever you are. We helped one couple where the husband was strictly vegan - to the point where he wouldn’t even use the rest of the family’s crockery - so their kitchen placed a lot of importance on storage. It was quite a challenge, but really fun.

I couldn’t live without… one of those Swedish cheese slicers. I use one every morning when I make breakfast. I could have said a wine opener, but that would have sounded a bit suspicious!

My signature dish is… Swedish, of course! Living alone, I don’t cook much, but at the weekends I love to entertain. I make lots of Swedish food for my English friends. My signature dish is Jonssons Temptation, or Jonsson frestelse. It’s a mixture of potatoes, cream and anchovies and makes a great starter.

I have one of those really small IKEA dishwashers…that I use when I have a dinner party. You can wash up the pots and pans by hand, but it’s nice to put the plates and things in there.

I like quite a lot of stainless steel… because kitchens can get quite dirty if you’re preparing food there. So you want things that are easy to wipe down and keep clean.

Colour is personal… and my kitchen is like a morgue! It’s all stainless steel and white. I like it quite minimal. If it fits your personality, and you really love your kitchen, then no-one should judge whether it’s right or wrong colour-wise.

My happiest kitchen memory is… probably in my parents’ kitchen in Sweden. I’ve got loads of happy memories like Christmas morning breakfasts and after Easter meals. Sometimes, it would get to ten o’ clock at night and you’d have fifteen people in there making sandwiches.

I do a lot of recycling in my kitchen… more than the average, I think. When you do kitchen recycling for people that are really into it, you need about ten different bins. When people come to my house, they are surprised by how much I recycle.

I don’t have a freezer in my kitchen… because when I moved in, I lived for about six months without one and realised that I didn’t really need it. I eat much healthier without a freezer.

My kitchen is quite funny… due to one particular cabinet – I don’t have enough wardrobe space so I actually store my shoes in the kitchen. It just goes to show you can store anything in your kitchen cabinets!