A kitchen is the most complex part of a home. It may be large or small, frugal or expansive. It is where the home user spends more working time than any other. And it is where it is easy to make design mistakes that can make a home, or parts of it, inefficient and unduly expensive.
The following list covers a number of the considerations that should go into the final decisions about kitchen design layout and implementation. It is not meant to be a list of absolutes. Sometimes you'll want to compromise because an item simply won't fit with the plan you really want and sometimes because you've got your own pet idea that's counter to the item in the list. The decisions are a very personal thing with you and your house will reflect that.
1. DO put the dishwasher adjacent to the sink. Some folks feel that it should be on the right-hand side of the sink and others that it should be on the same side as the disposal. Do it either way but do not separate them. While there isn't as much rinsing of dishes needed before they go into the dishwasher as there was a few years ago, it's hard to imagine loading a dishwasher where nothing gets a preliminary rinse or scrubbing. When they're wet and there's a separation between dishwasher and sink, it means extra attention to keep from dripping on the floor. And most of us would like to be able to scrape the dishes into the sink and then not have to take steps to reach the dishwasher.
About as user unfriendly as you can imagine. The photo is for real; this was in a house for sale! The dishwasher is three feet from the sink and around a bend in the counter. Don't do anything like this in your own home.You'll see dishwashers in the same counter as the sink but separated by a few feet. That's just plain unfriendly and unthinking. And you'll see them in a cabinet at 90 degrees, which is a way to avoid putting them in a corner but it still doesn't solve the drip problem nor the need to take a step to load the dishwasher.
A caution here. A very nice arrangement is to have the sink in a 45-degree corner in front of a window and to have the dishwasher in one of the cabinets on either side. But this time DO leave some space between the sink and the dishwasher. Otherwise, when you open the dishwasher door, it'll stick out just where you want to stand. Six inches is a minimum between the sink and the dishwasher, up to a foot is better (and then use this space as a nice place for a vertical cupboard for trays and cooking sheets).
2. DON'T put a dishwasher in a corner. It is a common unfriendly thing to have in a kitchen. You'll find this in an unbelievably large number of kitchen designs.
The problem is that when the dishwasher door is open there are cupboards and cabinets that are unreachable so that when the dishwasher is unloaded you have to handle dishes and pots and pans twice to put them away...once to set them on the counter and then, after you've closed the door, to store them in the cupboards that were blocked before.
Sometimes it's an easy matter to move the dishwasher to the other side of the sink away from the corner but often it's not. When the sink is at one end of a narrow kitchen and, if the dishwasher is to be adjacent, it has to be in a corner. Clearly the way out of this one is to not put the sink (or the dishwasher) in this kind of location. You may have to give up having the sink in front of a window, but there are simply better arrangements than a cornered dishwasher.
3. DON'T put a refrigerator in a corner, another common, unfriendly thing. When a refrigerator is in a corner, a door that's there won't swing past straight out - it will hit the wall. There are shelves on refrigerator doors and these will limit access to the interior of the refrigerator when the door is only as open as it can get when it hits a the wall. If this is on the freezer side of a side-by-side refrigerator (the most commonly-used type), the door shelves will not let you pull the inside bins or shelves out more than part way.
A refrigerator here will be an irritation forever. Either you won't be able to get a door fully open or you'll have to walk around it when it is open. (I know, I've got one and, when ever something is dropped inside the freezer, it falls to the bottom of the freezer and it will stay there because the bottom bin cannot be removed. Real clean out time requires that the whole refrigerator be pulled out from the corner to let the door open fully. A very unfriendly arrangement.)
There are ways out, but you have to plan ahead. One is to be sure any wall adjacent to the refrigerator is short enough that it doesn't interfere with the refrigerator door. If you can do this, it's great. Or get a refrigerator where the door shelves were designed to let you pull the bins out even with the door only open straight out. These are fairly common for the situation where the wall is on the refrigerator side, but not when it's on the freezer side.
4. DO make sure the exhaust system for the cooktop is big enough...and effective enough. Two options are available, a downdraft unit where the fan sucks smoke, steam and odors sideways from the cooktop.
The nature of downdraft units is that it's the fan vs. Mother Nature. The air you want to get outside has been heated and, as such, the natural tendency is for it to rise. The downdraft fan fights this tendency and its effectiveness is lowered as a result. If you don't like the looks of a hood and don't mind the noise that a good downdraft fan makes, it may be OK for you. But beware that they won't exhaust as much of the air you want to get rid of, as a good updraft unit will.
But there are potential shortcomings with updraft units as well. They depend on the smoke, steam and odors rising naturally into the hood. They will not be very effective for products from burners that are not directly under the hood and cross drafts can carry these products all over the house. The most effective way is to have the cooktop up against a wall with a hood that's as large in area as is the cooktop.
There's another thing to be careful of here, too. In an effort to cut corners the builder may exercise an option where the fan in the hood blows the smoke through a filter and then back into the room rather than outside. Don't get one of these. They give lip service to the exhaust fan concept. They don't exhaust anything.
5. DO leave space in front of an oven door so that you can stand there when you're taking something in or out. If you haven't had the experience of trying to take a large roast or turkey out of a hot oven when you have to stand to one side, don't start now. It doesn't work. You should be able to stand in front of the oven, open the door, lean over and reach whatever's inside.
The same problem of getting something out of an oven also happens when it's mounted too close to the floor.
6. DO have convenient landing areas for the stove top, the ovens and the refrigerator. Ones where you don't have to walk around a door to set things down.
For the stove top this is usually easy, the adjacent counter is convenient. For thermal ovens it may take a little more planning to be sure that there's a counter next to the cabinet that has the oven in it.
The same for the microwave oven. But you may have another out here if you put a pullout shelf just below it where you can set things you're putting into or taking out of the oven.
For a refrigerator things can be more complex. An adjacent counter won't work for a side-by-side refrigerator (you would have to walk around an open door to reach it). A counter, which is in front of the refrigerator and no more than a step away, is ideal. For a freezer-over or freezer-under model, an adjacent counter is fine...as long as it's not on the hinge side of the refrigerator door.
7. DO keep the distances short:
And don't have an island or peninsula you have to go around. The distance from the refrigerator to the cooktop or the refrigerator to the microwave oven are not as critical because you move food between them less frequently. Having any of them separated from the sink by an island or peninsula is most unfriendly.
A user-friendly kitchen. The sink (beside the dishwasher), the stove top, the microwave oven and the refrigerator are all only a few steps from each other and there's no island in between.
8. DO remember smaller kitchen appliances. We are getting and using them more and more, particularly small counter-top ovens. Do make sure there is room on the countertop for them when they're used and, if you want them stored off the counter when not in use, be sure you have a place for that.
9. DO, if space is available, have a kitchen desk-type area where you can keep cookbooks, recipes, and appliance instruction information. And don't forget a place for the telephone and for a computer. This latter, in today's cyber environment could well be a part of a larger system which provides the means of high-speed Internet connections to every room in the house as well as home-wide intercommunications and alarm systems.
10. DO watch kitchen corners where above-the-counter cupboards and below-the-counter cabinets will go. In both cases a little planning can avoid virtually inaccessible corners that plague so many homes. Cupboards shaped like trapezoids can fit into a corner and have 45-degree doors that allow easy access. If you're planning ahead you may well be able to use the bottom of such cupboards for small appliance storage.
Lower cabinets in corners can also be shaped like trapezoids only this time their depth will necessitate a different strategy for access. Lazy Susan's are the usual way to get things where you can get to them.
The cupboard in the corner doesn't have inaccessible corners. The doors are at 45 degrees. There is appliance storage on top of the counter where it is convenient and useful. A lazy Susan is used in the cabinet below the counter. A user-friendly way to deal with the corner-cabinet problem.
A caution here regarding hinges. Most cabinets today are the European or box-cabinet style in contrast to older face-frame designs. (see Ferguson's earlier article on cabinets.) These box-cabinets have hinges are that hidden from view when the doors are closed. A popular hinge for these cabinets extends back into the cabinet some 2 inches from the opening. Which is fine if they can mount flat on the side of the cabinet. But when the cabinet is in a corner, this hinge is NOT suitable. Yes, it can still be used but its length is back into open spaces of the cabinet where it is an annoying thing to reach around if you try to get back in there...and you must be very careful not to gouge yourself on the hinge. There are two options, which a good cabinetmaker will use. One is a simple hinge, which mounts on the edge of the cabinet front and does not stick back into the cabinet. The other is a more complex hinge that swings out with the door when you open it, again not sticking back into the cabinet.
11. DO carefully consider the kitchen layout in terms of traffic, both within the kitchen and between the kitchen and the rest of the house - there should be no through traffic where people are working. Look at the work areas discussed earlier and add to those another consideration, people collecting dirty dishes from the eating area and carrying them to the sink and dishwasher. This eating area may be on an island, on a peninsula or a table in an adjacent breakfast nook.
12. DO consider cabinet access carefully. You may want a walk-in pantry and, if you have room, go for it. And do take a hard look at using pullout shelves in cabinets wherever you can. They just make it so much easier in accessing whatever is stored in them.
13. DO think about some extras in your kitchen that may make it a bit more user friendly - things that can express your personality in terms of some of your likes. Such extras could include:
14. DO remember lighting. It should be substantial and not an after thought. Can-type floodlights work fine, whether in a flat or a sloped ceiling. Don't forget the kitchen sink, it deserves a light of its own and do consider what you can put under cabinets over the counter work areas. There are unobtrusive lights that make a much more enjoyable workplace.
15. DON'T forget switches and outlets. You decide what to have and where they should go, don't leave it solely to the electrician. He might or might not give you what you want if you don't speak up. He will know about codes and be sure that you're ideas are OK in that respect. It's worth taking the time to plan ahead.