Whether you live in a small studio apartment or an 8-bed mansion, space is the one thing we all want to utilize effectively. Whether you’re building your house from scratch or doing some renovation, you would always want it to be clutter-free, and avoid banging into furniture here and there. The one place where you absolutely need to manage space is the kitchen, where all the magic happens.
In most homes, kitchens are used not only for cooking and washing dishes, but also for dining and having a conversation with friends. For applications like these, you need to have an open space where you can accommodate a few people and cook easily without colliding into each other.
Here are some guidelines that will help you design your kitchen layout for space.
For some people, the kitchen is the place to cook, grab stuff from the refrigerator, and wash dirty dishes. For your household, you need to make a list of the purposes you wish to fulfil in your kitchen.
Many others like to dine in the kitchen as well, and also to sit and chat, or check their mail during cooking. Your kitchen can serve just as a cooking station, or it can also become a work zone, or a place where your family can gather and communicate over dinner. So be clear about your requirements before you design.
If you have researched kitchen layout ideas and techniques, you would know what the work triangle is. The work triangle is the path you follow while working in the kitchen, between the stove, refrigerator, and the sink. The three essentials need to be in such a formation that you have everything within your reach while you are cooking. Also, if another person needs something from the refrigerator or the utensils, they don’t disrupt your path.
An efficient model would be the Galley layout, where the stove and refrigerator are adjacent, and the sink is parallel to them. This gives you less counter space, and people coming in the kitchen would have to disturb you. For avoiding the collisions, and to have more counter space, go for the L-shaped layout, where the stove and refrigerator are adjacent, but the sink is to the right of the stove. This way, anyone who wishes to grab a cold beverage does not bother you.
If you have more space, you can go for a U-shaped kitchen. This is where all the three kitchen essentials are on separate ends of the kitchen, and you get ample counter space around each device. If you use a lot of appliances and utensils, and like to spread them all around the kitchen while you are busy being a master chef, this is ideal layout for you. It has ideal space for moving around, and people can also sit or stand and have dinner in the kitchen.
Another variation of the U-shaped layout is a G-shaped kitchen, where a common kitchen counter extends right next to the sink. It usually separates the kitchen and the dining room, and is mostly used to serve food. For a more informal setting, you can also serve your meals and have them on the counter.
The layouts that are mentioned above require a certain amount of space to be adopted perfectly, and not all of us have the free space needed to execute the design of the kitchens. This is where your creativity kicks in. Since you are the owner of the house, and you have to live in it, nobody knows the way you will use your kitchen better than you. You can decide where each appliance goes, and where you want to keep your utensils.
For houses or apartments with small spaces, you can always go for the single layout, in which the work triangle doesn’t come into play, and the stove, refrigerator, and sink are all adjacent to each other. This layout is also called an open kitchen, and is popular in many studio and one-bedroom apartments. It saves you quite a bit of floor space, but offers limited counter space.
Moreover, storage space will also be limited, but that is not a problem if you live alone or just a roommate. It is not an ideal setting for houses with bigger families.
Since you need a design layout for space, you need to measure every countertop, distance from sink to counter, and all of the nitty-gritty details. For starters, you absolutely have to keep some empty space on either side of your stove to keep the hot utensils, or the ingredients for the recipe you are cooking.
You would also need to measure the distance of the upper cabinets from the countertop, as you do not want them to be too high, and neither would you want to bang your head into them multiple times a day!
All these guidelines will help you design a nice kitchen layout. Of course, it’s best to higher a professional to design a practical and elegant kitchen. It’s not every day you design the heart of your home. Make sure you get it right. As a leading home interior design company we offer competitive rates for your kitchen design, for more information get in touch with Zenith Arc.
