The Complete Guide To Kitchen Layouts

Good kitchen design starts early, even as early as locating the room within the home. If you’re lucky enough to have the ability to choose which direction your kitchen will face, consider orienting it toward the east or southeast, where morning sun will fill it with light. Unfortunately, in rehab, choosing the southeast orientation is not necessarily possible, although we think it’s worth working hard to achieve.

If this simply can not be done, orienting the kitchen south or southwest is an excellent choice. In the event that you go this route, provide some method of shading the area from the hot summer sun, such as deciduous trees or shrubs, awnings or overhangs above windows or despite having good window treatments.

Once you get the kitchen oriented, there are a few basic Interior design tips principles that will help you with the layout.

Traffic

A residence is not an island; it requires frequent contact with the exterior world, much of which is achieved by car. An attached garage closely adjoining your kitchen or a back door opening on the driveway can decrease the burden of carrying groceries in and the trash out.

A mud room can reduce kitchen traffic by acting as a staging area for trips into and out of our home. It offers a buffer from cold air, storage space for coats, hats and boots and even pantry shelves for items you will not be using immediately. Taking all of this activity from the kitchen provides more room for cooking and eating, which are, in the end, a kitchen’s main events.

THE TASK Triangle
For the majority of the 20th century, kitchens were organized around what’s known as the task triangle – the geometry dependant on sink, range and refrigerator. Since most kitchen work is a dance among the three appliances, a good design can make the distances between them comfortable. If they are too short, the work area will be cramped; if too much, the cook can be exhausted trotting between them. The guideline would be that the three legs of the triangle should soon add up to between 12 and 26 feet.

A couple of three basic layouts for the work triangle: u-shaped, l-shaped and galley. Inside the u-shaped kitchen, there are a triangular path from the sink using one wall to the range on another, to the refrigerator on the third. In an l-shaped kitchen, one factor of the task triangle is against one wall with the other two along another. In very tight circumstances, all three points are arranged across the same wall, like the cooking facilities on-board ship, thus the name galley kitchen.

Ideally no traffic should go through the task triangle. There is nothing more irritating than having people crash into you if you are aiming to cook. If there’s going to be an island or table in the area, place it where it’ll neither obstruct the task triangle nor be too much to be always a useful work station itself.

Remember that people not directly involved with cooking often need usage of the kitchen, particularly the refrigerator. In the three the different parts of the task triangle, the refrigerator should be located at the triangle’s outer corner for quick access. The sink should be accessible as well, however the cooking surface should be as protected as it can be, and therefore at the most remote point of the task triangle.

Necessary Gadgets
To operate well, the sink, cook top and refrigerator each need to be surrounded with a degree of floor and counter space. The refrigerator door requires a clear swing and, when possible, enough room for just two visitors to reach in simultaneously. The doors of any cabinets surrounding the fridge shouldn’t conflict using its door. Along with the refrigerator also needs an 18-inch run of counter as a staging area for foods going into or appearing out of it.

By custom, the sink is located beneath a window, both to provide daylight for chores done there and give one a view outdoors. Perhaps the custom derives from the times before dishwashers, when the duty of washing up was a tedious affair done yourself. Yet working at a sink with a window continues to be much more enjoyable than working at a sink without one. Designers often place the sink first and construct all of those other work triangle after that.

Minimum counter lengths are believed to be 36 inches using one side of the sink and 24 on the other, gives you a staging area for dirty dishes on one side and a drying area on the other. It seems logical to locate the best expanse of counter privately of the sink closest to the cook top, since that is where most foods prepared at the sink are destined.

The optimum location for the cook top is along an exterior wall, rather than with an island or peninsula. With a stove on another wall, it’s easy to install an effective hood and ventilation system, necessary to expel grease, smoke and combustion gases. The stove or cook top needs a 21- to 30-inch overhead clearance so cooks can readily see and access rear burners and the ventilation system can do its work efficiently.

If you intend to use a dishwasher, place it near the sink. Where you decide to put it might be based upon whether you’re right- or left-handed and on the path dishes are likely to take when cleared from the table. Also consider the choreography of two different people loading and unloading the device.

Storage Areas
Glassware and dishes should be stored in cabinets or shelves nearby the sink. Commonly used pots and pans could be stowed between the sink and cook top or from a hanging rack.

Consider locating your silverware drawers close to the drying rack or dishwasher but from the primary work triangle so that someone can set the table without interrupting the cook.

Professional cooks, who spend significant amounts of amount of time in their kitchens, want to have their utensils within easy reach. (Julia Child stows her knives on pegs above her sink.)

Shelves or cabinets above the cook top can hold foods that are not damaged by warmth, such as pasta, rice, and cereal. A shelf just below these cabinets but above the cook top can transform the area into a cooking workshop, providing a useful resting place for timers, spices, cooking supplies and implements.

A large level of kitchen goods can be stowed in a pantry, a competent, relatively inexpensive method of storage. Since a pantry is essentially a closet lined with shelves, it’s easy on the budget. Also intend to reserve area of the pantry as a computer program closet, where mops, brooms and cleaning supplies can be easily stored.

Eating In
Islands can serve as tables for informal meals. Whether it’s the height of conventional counters-36 inches-you’ll need stools and an ample overhang around 12 inches to comfortably accommodate sitters’ knees.

If you’re considering placing a table in your kitchen, here are some basic parameters: A rectangular table with a seating capacity of four to six should measure 2½ feet by 5 to 5½ feet. You will need 2½ to 3 feet of clearance all around for chairs and satisfactory circulation. A round table occupies less space but can accommodate more people if you need to. Remember that a tiny upsurge in radius makes for a big upsurge in the circumference of the table and then the floor space it will require up.