Home Remodeling Crash Course: What I Learned the Hard Way

When designing a kitchen, it's easy to focus on visual elements like tile, countertops, windows, and cabinets. Those components are important, but many folks overlook the broader issue of layout when it comes to kitchen design projects. You shouldn't overlook kitchen layout design for the following four reasons.

Safety

A kitchen can be one of the most dangerous places in a house. If you're looking at a kitchen design, you need to think about the basic question of how the cooking space will work. You don't want to station the oven in a spot that forces you to walk hot stuff across the entire kitchen, for example.

Likewise, a dedicated cook will want a kitchen design that allows them enough room for their equipment and ingredients. You don't want to get jammed up in the kitchen because that's when things like knives and pots become dangerous.

Flow

Even if there is only one person in a kitchen, that individual needs to be able to flow around the space. How do you get from the stove to the sink, for example? Suppose there is an entryway door in the kitchen. How will people entering or leaving be able to move around when life gets busy in the kitchen? A kitchen with a good flow is essential to have an enjoyable cooking and family area.

Aesthetics

Lots of ideas sound good in the abstract. However, the proverbial rubber hits the road when you start looking at aesthetics through the lens of kitchen layout design. If you position the cabinets at one end of the cooking space, for example, will that look good in a lived-in kitchen?

You also will want to think about basic things. Where should the windows be to maximize natural light? If you position a window on an east-west axis, will that cause too much sunlight to come in at certain times of the year? For that matter, where are the best spots in the layout for artificial lights?

Efficiency

The layout of a kitchen dictates how efficient it will be. Fortunately, there are lots of efficiency-maximizing options in a kitchen. You can look at options like under-counter storage, a pantry, and cupboards to provide plenty of places to keep things.

Every bit of space you save is something you can utilize in another capacity, too. If you're trying to find room to provide a larger walking area around a planned island, for example, a more efficient storage solution may free up what you need.

Contact a contractor for more information about kitchen layout design.