Planning a Practical Kitchen Layout for Cooking

Start With the Work Triangle

Every practical kitchen comes back to the same three points: the sink, the hob and the fridge. Draw lines between them and you have the work triangle — the shape your feet trace while you cook. It sounds old-fashioned, but it is still the most useful planning tool you have, because it exposes awkward layouts long before you spend a penny on units.

Three rules keep it workable:

• Each leg of the triangle should sit between 1.2m and 2.7m. Anything longer and you will be trekking the length of the room with a hot pan.
• The three legs added together should come to roughly 4m to 8m. Much shorter and you have a cramped galley; much longer and dinner takes twice as long to make.
• Nothing should cross the triangle — no island parked in the middle of it, no open dishwasher door, no dining chair in the path.

If you can only fix one thing in a tired kitchen, bring the fridge closer to the prep area. It is the point people get wrong most often, usually because a fridge has been squeezed into whatever gap was left by the back door.

Leave a Landing Zone Beside Every Appliance

A landing zone is the stretch of worktop next to an appliance where things actually rest — a hot tray, a full pan, a bowl of chopped onions. It is the most overlooked part of kitchen design and the reason so many brand-new kitchens feel exhausting to use.

• Hob: 300mm minimum each side, ideally 400mm one side and 600mm the other, so there is somewhere to set down a hot roasting tin.
• Sink: 400mm one side for a draining board and 300–400mm on the other for prep. A sink wedged between two tall units is a daily irritation.
• Oven: at least 400mm beside it, and preferably at the same height. An eye-level oven in a tall housing is kinder on the back than bending to a low one, and it frees up a base unit for drawers.
• Fridge: 400mm beside the hinge side if you can manage it, so the door swings clear and you can pull a drawer out from inside.

Landing zones are also where sockets belong. Two doubles above the worktop near the hob and another pair at the prep area will spare you a trailing extension lead across the floor.

Keep Thoroughfares Genuinely Clear

Circulation is where a lovely drawing on paper falls apart in real life. A thoroughfare is a route people walk through, not a working aisle, and it needs more room than most plans allow.

The usual culprits are cupboard doors and dining chairs. A standard 600mm base unit door needs 600mm of clear floor to open properly, and a dishwasher door wants closer to 700mm. Draw those swings on your plan as arcs and check that nothing crosses a walkway.

Dining chairs need roughly 750–900mm behind the table to pull out and sit down, plus another 600mm to walk behind someone who is already seated. If your kitchen table sits on the main route to the garden, allow at least 1.5m between the table edge and the nearest unit or wall.

Get the Aisles and Clearances Right

Measurements do the heavy lifting here, so it pays to be firm about them.

• Between facing units: 1000–1200mm. Go to 1200mm if two people cook at once, or if an oven or dishwasher sits on one side. 900mm is the absolute floor and only works where no appliance doors open into that gap.
• Galley kitchens: 1200mm between runs where space allows; 1000mm is workable for a single cook.
• Around an island or peninsula: 1000–1200mm on the working side, and never less than 900mm on a plain walking route.
• In front of a tall unit or oven housing: 900mm clear, so doors open and you can step back with something hot.

If a layout fails one of these by 100mm, change the layout. Squeezing the gap never works; you will feel it every single day.

Place Bins, Dishwashers and Corners Thoughtfully

The dishwasher belongs immediately beside the sink, with 500–600mm of clear worktop above it for stacking. Put it on the far side of the room and you will be carrying dripping plates across the floor for years.

Bins work best as a pull-out beside the prep area rather than the sink, so you can scrape and chop in one spot without turning. Treat corners with suspicion too. A corner base unit with a plain door wastes an enormous amount of space, and a corner sink kills the work triangle outright. A carousel or pull-out corner unit is usually worth the extra cost.

Keep the fridge away from the hob and oven if you possibly can. Heat makes a fridge work harder, which shortens its life and nudges up your electricity bill.

Walk It Through Before You Buy

Before ordering anything, mark the layout out on the floor with masking tape — unit fronts, door swings, table and chairs. Then spend a week cooking in it. Carry an imaginary pan from hob to sink, open the fridge, pull out the bin.

Ask yourself four questions. Can two people pass without turning sideways? Can I set down a hot pan safely? Can I open everything without moving anything else first? And can I carry a full plate from the worktop to the table without sidestepping? If the answer is yes to all four, you have a kitchen that will still work beautifully in fifteen years.