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Layouts
The plan matters more than the doors. Get the distances right and a modest kitchen works beautifully; get them wrong and no finish will rescue it.
Three zones, in the order you use them: store, prepare, cook.
Almost every good kitchen plan is a version of the same idea. Fridge and dry goods together; a clear, generous run of worktop between the sink and the hob; the bin, the dishwasher and the cutlery drawer within a pace of each other.
What varies is the shape of the room, and that’s what these layouts describe. At your consultation we will sketch two or three options over your plan — including at least one you have not thought of, which is often the one people choose.
With an island
The one everybody asks for. Needs a genuine metre of clearance on every working side — 1.1m if a dishwasher door and a person have to coexist. See also the peninsula, which does the same job without the pinch points.
Open plan
The risk is that the kitchen feels detached from the room it now shares. Carrying matching units into the dining or living area links the look, and downdraft extraction keeps cooking smells out of the sofa.
U-shaped
The most efficient plan there is — everything within a turn. Worth solving the two corners properly with LeMans pull-outs or carousel fittings, otherwise you lose real storage to dead space.
L-shaped
Flexible, sociable and forgiving. Keeps two walls free for a table or a garden door, and you can add an island later if the room allows.
Galley
Two parallel runs, with 1.2m between them if two people cook. Fast to work in and often unfairly dismissed — a galley kitchen has the shortest distances of any plan.
Small & compact
Where design earns the most. Go full height, use drawers rather than cupboards, choose a 45cm dishwasher where sensible, and put a boiling-water tap in to reclaim the kettle’s footprint.
Peninsula
An island with one end still attached — the working side, the boundary and the seating, in rooms where that space is better used along a wall. Services run through the joined end rather than under the floor.
The clearances nobody mentions until it's too late
1.0m
Minimum walkway around an island. Prefer 1.1m where a dishwasher or oven door opens into it.
900mm
Clear worktop between sink and hob — the space you actually prepare food on.
1.2m
Between facing runs in a galley, so two people can pass without a negotiation.
600mm
Seating width per person at an island, with 300mm of knee depth under the overhang.
Treat these as starting points. A kitchen used by one person who cooks from scratch and a kitchen used by four people in a hurry want different plans — which is why the first appointment is mostly questions.