Kitchen plans and layouts vary widely in visual appeal and functional effectiveness. How can you plan your new or remodeled kitchen for maximum aesthetic appeal, combined with comfort and convenience? To answer this, here are some guidelines to adopt as you create potential layouts for your dream kitchen.

Start With Cabinets

In most kitchens, there are more cabinets than any other single item, and along with worktops, they represent by far the highest cost of your kitchen installation. For this reason, planning kitchen cabinets is a key part of the process to provide the essential food and utensil storage, as well as efficient meal-preparation facilities for your family.

Many families spend a great deal of time at home in the kitchen. Without kitchen cabinets, these everyday activities would be an arduous undertaking. It is important when planning a new kitchen to take the time needed to do thorough research, so…

What Should You Consider?

1. Traffic patterns around and through the kitchen:

• total footage of the three sides of the work triangle formed by distances between the fridge, stove, and sink should be within the range 10′ to 25′.

2. Worktops at a comfortable working height

• counter height is generally 36″

3. Wall Cupboard Height
Wall cupboards at a height reachable for all but the youngest in the family, and with enough space to allow worktops below to be used without danger of bumping your head!

• height from counter top to upper cabinets: 16″ to 18″

4. Counter Top Width
Kitchen cabinet base units wide enough to support a deep enough food preparation space.

• cabinet depth: 24″
• countertop overhang should be 1″, giving total depth of 25″

Dependencies to Watch Out For

Often, the kitchen sink and its cabinet bases are positioned at a widow. This is good since it provides natural light and a view to the outside for anyone working there.

Normally, the sink cabinets have doors mounted to provide enclosed storage for cleaning items and hide unsightly plumbing and drain pipes.

Next to the sink can also be a good position for your washing machine and dishwasher, since both need access to water supply and waste water drainage. The panel mounted in front of the bowl is usually a dummy drawer front, sometimes hinged to fold down, with a plastic tray attached to hold small  items.

Separate Cook-Top?

If your plans include purchasing a separate cook-top, you’ll probably need to budget for oven cabinets. This will have deep, lower drawers below the oven space to contain pots and pans. Sometimes there’s room for a microwave oven above the main oven. You’ll probably also want to have storage at the top of this cabinet for baking trays, cookie sheets and other large flat dishes. Note, for the sake of safety, avoid puting heavy items in high cabinets.

Cook-tops are fitted into cut outs in the counter top, often with large drawers installed below so that cooking pots and pans are can be stored conveniently for ease of reach. Of course, the top drawer, if it is installed, will be shallower to allow it to fit below the cook-top. Where the cook-top requires more depth, the top drawer can be left out and a dummy front panel fitted to provide a matching finish.

What About Your Main Food Store?

The food store or pantry can be a cabinet, often available as a full-height, pull-out unit, or in more tradition homes, it may be an existing shelved closet. If the “pantry” is part of the kitchen cabinets design, it may incorporate pullout drawers or fold out can storage. However you design your pantry cabinet, it will be your main food store for cans, bottled and packaged foods.

Accessorize in Style…

There is also a whole range of accessories you can add to your kitchen cabinets to make best use of the available space, or add convenience. Slide out trash drawers, a “lazy Susan” for your corner cabinet, a range hood and extractor cabinet, spice racks, appliance store, and refrigerator cabinet are other items to consider.

Of course, you should should visit your local cabinetmaker for more advice and ideas for your cabinets and other kitchen plans.