E30 - Kitchen Design Layouts and Location - Kitchen Design Essentials

Jul 1, 2020

Where your kitchen is located in the home, and getting the layout right is critical to good kitchen design. In this episode, Frances, and guest Interior Designer, Fabieli Fontana talk about the different locations of a kitchen in the home, along with different layouts and what some of the advantages and disadvantages are of each. An interesting discussion between two interior designers on optimum kitchen design!

SHOW NOTES

When it comes to kitchen design, there really is more to it than meets the eye. It is important to know how to determine the best location and design layouts for your kitchen to make sure that your space is functional in a way that suits you and your family's lifestyle needs.

Things to consider in choosing the right location for your kitchen

• Good access to natural light
• Other rooms that you are designing
• Personal preference for kitchens to be located
• Internal position
• How can you make things work the best way it can be with the conditions you have

Discussion in this episode covers

South Facing Kitchen

Possible issues with west and east facing kitchens

How your kitchen is located in terms of access to the outdoors
Use of servery windows, outdoor dining, views to garden, play areas and possible pool

Orientation of your kitchen
Consider where you are going to prepare food or where you're going to be standing when you have guests – how does this affect your vision of what's going on in the rest of the house.

Views and Windows
How they impact your kitchen design – in terms of capturing views, access to ventilation, and impact on cabinetry.

Floor plan is king!
It's important to get the design and layout of the kitchen right, while it’s still on paper, as it's very difficult to change it later without going through large expense Spend the time analysing how your location and flows are going to work before you even start getting into details of joinery design

Key Design Kitchen Layouts overview

• Galley Style Kitchen
  • Can be one wall or dual-sided
  • Space-saving option

• L-shaped
  • Works well in terms of storage and an easy layout to work with. Provides a lot of design flexibility
  • You can also move around the kitchen
  • Butler’s pantries easily flow from these designs

• U-shaped
  • Designed with either attached benchtop or floating island bench when attached, can make flow and access less than ideal.
  • Have more corners to deal with

When we’re designing kitchens, we always conduct a  Kitchen Deep Dive, to consider and design around our client's unique lifestyle and personal requirements to come up with a solution that would meet their needs, takes the whole home into consideration so flow and the overall design is integrated.

• Kitchen Triangle
  • The kitchen triangle is not something to get fixated on.
  • Ideally, the triangle needs to be up to seven meters cumulative so that you're not working more than seven meters between key elements of the kitchen.
  • Key is not to have key components of a kitchen, such as an oven or pantry, crossing a thoroughfare

Available Services:

Will your floor plan, and particularly your kitchen, work for you for years to come? Get a second opinion from an expert team. Find out more about our Floor Plan Sanity Check.

Overwhelmed by the amount of decisions that need to be made when creating a stylish, functional, and durable Kitchen? What materials to select, what colours go with each other? We offer several different kitchen design packages to assist with your kitchen design – be it a makeover, renovation, or new kitchen. Click the link here to find more.

Related Resources:

How to Choose the Right Bench Top

Top 5 tips for selecting benchtops

Top 5 ways to make best use of your floorplan

Creating “Forever Home” floorplans and getting them right

Kitchen Design Essentials - Season Overview

Kitchen Design Essentials - How to Determine What You Need in Your Kitchen