Kitchen planning
Published
In short: a kitchen works not because it is an L or a single run, but because the three working zones sit in the right order — sink, then a place to chop, then the hob, all running one way. Between sink and hob you need at least 600 mm of worktop, otherwise there is nowhere to prepare food; the fridge belongs next to the sink rather than between sink and hob, because it breaks the working line. Worktop height follows the person who cooks rather than a standard: roughly half their height plus 50 mm. Get those four things right and the kitchen will be comfortable in any shape.
Why the shape decides less than people expect
A conversation about a kitchen almost always starts with shape: a single run, an L, a U, something with an island. In practice the room dictates the shape and there is often no choice at all — an island will not fit a kitchen 2.2 metres wide, and a U-shaped answer blocks the route through a walk-through kitchen. Shape is therefore a consequence, not a decision.
What really settles daily comfort is the order of the three zones and the distances between them. The same three-metre run can be comfortable or miserable, and the whole difference is whether the hob sits hard against the sink or there is somewhere to put a chopping board between them. So planning should start not with the shape but with the order in which you move while cooking.
Three zones that must not be reordered
The order is the same whatever the shape: food travels from the fridge to the sink, from there to the worktop, from there to the hob. Break that sequence and you walk back and forth with every carrot.
Storage
The fridge and the food cupboards. Their place is at the end of the run, next to the sink, not halfway between sink and hob. The second thing that is easy to miss: the fridge door should swing away from the wall into the room, otherwise it catches every time and people get used to opening it halfway.
Sink and preparation
The sink plus worktop to one side of it, the side depending on which hand you work with. Under the sink usually live the filter, the bin and everything chemical, so that cabinet is built with a pull-out bin rather than a shelf: hunting for something at the back of an under-sink cupboard while crouching is awkward for absolutely everyone.
Cooking
The hob or cooktop with the oven. The main rule is never to push the hob hard against a wall or a tall unit: on the side where you set down a hot pan you need at least 300 mm of worktop. If both sides of the hob are full-height cabinets, there is simply nowhere for a hot pan to go.
Distances between zones
Between sink and hob, at least 600 mm of worktop, comfortably from 800. Between fridge and sink, 400 mm is enough. The sides of the work triangle added together are comfortable at roughly 3.5 to 6.5 metres: less means you crowd yourself in one spot, more means a kilometre of walking per meal.
Heights measured against a person, not a standard
Worktop height
The usual 850 to 900 mm is an average suited to someone around 1.70 m. The working rule is simpler: half your height plus about 50 mm. At 1.60 m that gives roughly 850, at 1.80 m roughly 950. The gap between 850 and 950 looks trivial and your back notices it in the second hour of cooking. Where two people of very different heights share the kitchen, the worktop follows whoever cooks more often.
From worktop to wall cabinets
A comfortable gap is 550 to 650 mm. Less and you knock your head and cannot stand a blender there; more and the top shelf becomes unreachable without a chair. Above the hob that distance is kept larger, and the extractor manual dictates how much: the figure there depends on whether the hob is gas or induction.
Depth and the plinth
Base units are usually 550 to 600 mm deep and wall units 300 to 350, and that is not a matter of taste: deeper wall units start to block the light and catch your head. The 100 to 150 mm plinth at the bottom is not decoration — it gives the toe of your shoe somewhere to go when you stand right against the worktop.
The short answers
Does a small kitchen need an island?
An island works if, once it is in, at least 900 mm of clear route remains on every side, and a metre is better. That means a kitchen from roughly 3.5 metres wide; anything narrower turns the island into an obstacle people edge around. In a room of 10 to 12 square metres a peninsula or a worktop across the window sill usually wins instead: the same working centimetres without losing the route through.
Is the washing machine better in the kitchen or the bathroom?
From a kitchen planning point of view, a machine under the worktop eats a whole 600 mm bay in exactly the zone where sink and preparation are needed. If the bathroom has room for it, the kitchen only gains. If there is no room, the machine goes beside the sink, where water and waste already run, and not between sink and hob, so the working line stays unbroken.
How many sockets should be planned, and where?
Count places rather than numbers: two sockets per working zone above the worktop, dedicated circuits for the oven, the hob and the dishwasher, one inside the under-sink cabinet for the filter and one for the extractor. This has to be settled before the kitchen is built, because once the worktop is fitted a new socket above it means chasing a channel into a finished wall.
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Where to start
Sketch the room with wall, window and door dimensions, tell us your height, and we will say which zone order will actually fit there.
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- MEBLI DIM KUZMENKO
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