Don’T Let Your Kitchen Floor Plan Turn Into A Nightmare
Is your kitchen floor plan the setting for a kitchen nightmare? No, this is not in reference to your Friday night Mystery Meatloaf Special. Nor does it involve any movies with lots of shiny, sharp objects. No, your kitchen nightmare can stem from nothing more than a poorly designed kitchen design plan.
Some signs your kitchen floor plan is a nightmare include all the times you’ve complained about the lack of counter space; the countless times you’ve dropped an entire pot’s contents on the floor while transferring it from the sink to the stove; the many times you yelled at the dog for getting in the way as you rushed from food preparation area to stove and back. You can avoid a kitchen nightmare in the future by creating a new kitchen floor plan based on these fundamental tips:
Work Triangle
Always keep in mind the traditional “work triangle”- the stove, sink and refrigerator- in your kitchen floor plan. Even though the microwave has also become a popular appliance, the basic trinity still holds. The work triangle should have clear, unobstructed paths between each vertex. The length of each side of the triangle should be between 4-9 feet, and the perimeter should not be more than 26 feet. Those appear to be the optimal distances to avoid feeling too cramped as well as to avoid feeling like you have to rush to reach each appliance.
Try to envision the work triangle when studying kitchen floor plans. Once you have positioned the three main kitchen appliances, now it’s time to fill in the spaces with counters and cabinets. Counters and cabinets typically go hand in hand, but often times people seem to feel cabinets only “belong” on the walls. Thus, while you can easily have three arms for counter space and appliances, you only have 2 for cabinets. But realistically, if you know you need cabinet space, then you might consider building or extending a third wall to accommodate hanging cabinets.
Counters
There should be at least four feet of countertop for food preparation beside the sink, stove and fridge. Ideally, there is space on both sides of each. Think of the natural flow of food preparation. You remove produce or meats from the fridge, then move to the sink to wash them. Next you cut up the food before moving to the stove to cook. Now try to see if the kitchen floor plan follows this natural flow. If the longest counter space is on the other side of the fridge, farthest from the sink, then you might have a problem.
If you are trying to position in your mind counter top appliances, try to avoid putting them between the main appliances. Of course, not everything works as planned. You may have a stretch between the stove and sink, but you it gets blocked by the dish rack. Or you want to position the coffee maker near the sink for easy access to water, but that blocks one side of the sink from food prep. Also be wary that long stretches of counter space may mean the farthest reaches are “dead zones.”
If you are still stuck for ideas of how to resolve a kitchen nightmare, look to commercial or custom kitchen designs online for ideas. You will see what we mean by open space. Do you notice chefs squeezing past each other or running into one another? Now keep that in mind with your kitchen, especially if you have a U-shape or corridor style kitchen floor plan. It may not work to include a kitchen table in these layouts. If you expect lots of little ones running in and out of your kitchen, consider the L-shape layout for the openness.
A well-designed online kitchen layout floor plan will have both the work triangle intact as well as a clear flow of traffic. You can have less surprises with an open kitchen. Let the only kitchen nightmares come from unexpected recipes, not the basic kitchen layout!
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