Planning your kitchen design requires some hands on action. First of all you need to get the tape measure out and accurately measure your kitchen, recording measurements of the full dimensions of the room, and noting the measurements and positions of windows, doors, and other immovable objects.
The second stage is to position the appliances. Decide on the locations for your cooker, fridge, freezer, sink, dishwasher and microwave oven. Sometimes it will be necessary to make adjustments to the wiring and plumbing for these appliances to reroute the water supply, drainage and electricity points.
These changes need to be planned and electricians and plumbers booked. You will need to arrange this such as to maintain a functional kitchen and ensure the minimum disruption of your everyday cooking duties.
The kitchen is one of the most important rooms in the house, and if you are planning on selling in the short to medium term, the kitchen design layout will be one of the major selling points. In order to cater to most peoples tastes, it is important to keep the design simple.
You will need to ensure that the main functions of the kitchen are all easy to achieve, and the process and transition between them is made efficient. Incorporate areas for food preparation, cooking, serving, food storage and doing the washing up.
It is best to keep to the tried and tested set up of work surface, appliance, work surface, and to form a work triangle between the sink, the cooker and food preparation areas. The ideal distance between these items should be in the range of 3600 to 6600 mm, and efforts should be made to minimize kitchen traffic through this zone.
Keeping it simple, there are 4 common choices of kitchen design layout.
- The Galley Kitchen. This is a corridor layout, ideal for long narrow kitchens with two rows of units and appliances, both facing each other. You should keep the aisle more than 1200 mm in width, and minimize traffic by placing the fridge by the entrance door.
- The U shaped Kitchen. This is similar to the galley kitchen, with an additional unit and appliance at the end of the U. This works well with a slightly wider room than for the galley kitchen, and also in smaller kitchens.
- The L shaped kitchen. A good choice when fitting a kitchen in the corner, and a good choice if you also want a kitchen dining area.
The Island kitchen. The most luxurious of the basic types, which requires a large room. It provides a great deal of scope for design, with the island being used for cooking, or as a preparation area. The latter can also double up as a breakfast bar area.