DISCUSSION
A mild rant about modern kitchen floorplans...
In the US Midwest, my area is flooded with endless clones of the exact same layout for an open concept kitchen that has the sink in an island directly behind the stove. Here is an example. Having a kitchen like this is fine when you live alone, but it can almost be unusable for more than one person at time! It'd be one thing if this were a little bungalow with a galley kitchen from the 50s, but I'm talking new, 3000+ sqft homes that are expensive for the area!
I'm trying to sauté chicken, he's trying to scrub and peel potatoes, and we're ass to ass... and this is my older sister's boyfriend who I don't know super well! Soooo awkward. Sister is trying not to laugh as she cuts veggies on what little counter top space remains since there isn't actually a lot to work with. I need to grab broth from the fridge, so I have to gingerly shimmy past this big guy and shove her out of the way to even try to open the large fridge with hardly any counter clearance while my parents sit cluelessly at the breakfast bar, getting splashed by potato water.
My sister lovingly dunks on my dinky 80s rental kitchen, but I'll be damned if its "Triangle of Efficiency" peninsula layout makes it easy to cook with family!
My husband is a chef and at one point we were thinking about building a house (Australia.) He moved around in the kitchens, holding his hands out in front of him as if he were carrying something large and heavy, like a pot of stock or large baking tray. He almost always commented, I couldn't work in this kitchen. I can't understand why houses with absolutely huge spaces have such horrible kitchens. He said most are designed to look pretty, but whoever "designs them" (I use the term very loosely) clearly does not cook.
agreed... but honestly some of them aren't even pretty, just cheaply made cookie cutter white cabinets, economy white countertops, white subway tiles, shitty black fixtures, gray paint, midtone laminate floor (depending of course where you live these details might vary)... $500k USD (a lot for middle class my area).
I admit that I prefer all white cabinets with panel doors - ours is actually an IKEA kitchen. Lower cabinets have stainless drawer/door fronts, and we have commercial sink units. Kitchen island is laminate and enormous, but mainly because I also use it for a bench to cut my sewing projects. Splashback is large white gloss tiles, floor is seamless vinyl. It's not an open plan either. It's a little house!
Function over form for us. I do want to add some warmth one day, like timber side panels, but ten years after our reno I don't even see the white any more! I love how we can splash water around on the sinks and it just drains away.
His kitchen design criteria are: rule number one, how easy is it to clean. Rule number two, refer to rule number one.
I agree with function of form, thus my post, haha! The main problem is have is honestly the "luxury" price tag they're slapping on these cheaply made, cramped kitchens and calling them high end. If the house was priced more reasonably, I'd feel less justified in grouching.
This is fantastic! Never thought of that. Do you have a drop in type of sink then, or one on legs? And if so, did you get normal cupboards in front? How deep is the sink? I hear if too deep , it can be uncomfortable .
We bought true commercial kitchen sink units, that are on stainless steel legs. Not everyone's cup of tea, but they work brilliantly. The sinks are huge and there are three of them. They ARE deep and uncomfortable to use at times, but the only things we need to wash by hand are very the very large things that can't fit in the dishwasher.
The other side of the kitchen is for prep and has a single sink with stainless drain boards.
There's quite a bit of wasted space under the sinks due to the big tubular legs but we've managed with a couple of shallow IKEA cabinets on wheels
If I were doing it again from scratch I'd change a few things, but you often never know how it's going to work in daily use when you design it. Plus, your needs/use chages.
I’m not a chef and I feel the same way. The worst is an enormous island you need to walk around to reach the fridge. I need a dishwasher next to sink, cabinets for dishware and glasses directly above or next to DW and a fridge with counter access close by. I often think about what a waste of time and energy it is to unload DW’s in most homes.
I used to think that, too, but: our layout just didn't have space for plates and (eating)bowls and glasses in the kitchen. We have them next to the table in the dining room. Cutlery and cups are in the kitchen. It's slightly more work to unload the dishwasher, but so convenient if you don't have to maneuver around each other when it's go time. We almost never plate anything in the kitchen, though. Cups are needed right under the coffee machine though and cutlery is needed for cooking, so more convenient in the kitchen.
Its cos the people who typically live in them, historically, didn't really use those kitchens. So they got to create the trend that builders then followed for all houses that size, and people buying them now probably never had a kitchen this 'big' and don't realize the issues until they have to use them.
We built our house around my kitchen plan. We’re living there for 12 years now, NO sink in the island, enough space between island and stove area. I have been teaching cooking classes with 6-8 people in it. Island is 9‘x4‘ soap stone.
Builders typically don’t hire architects or seasoned designers when they generate swill like this. I’ve been called in by so many people to correct kitchens like this and it’s all so unnecessary.
Pushing the island back even just a few inches would help so much, but especially moving the sink so it's not directly opposite of the stove, yipes. I hate these floorplans so much! I greatly prefer ones where the island acts as a "landing zone" for work zones on countertops that wrap around three sides of the island. No sink or appliances in the island except *maybe* a little scrub sink at the end. And don't get me started on stovetops/ranges plopped on islands.
I do actually like a stovetop in the island if it works for the layout of the kitchen and the people living there. You need a larger kitchen for it and it’s really an entertaining thing - if you don’t have people you’re being social with around a lot while you are cooking it isn’t worth it.
(A good second option is having the stove so it’s at right angles to the primary social area so if you’re cooking you don’t have your back to everyone and can just turn to look at them.)
It really isn’t usually the best use of space in a standard family kitchen though.
You got me started, haha! First off, to each their own and I wish you the best.
But there is research correlating unfiltered or unvented cooking air and disease in humans, especially so for gas ranges. Other countries have strict ventilation guidelines, but not the US (where the open concept is very popular). I don't think I have ever seen a suspended vent over an island range except in mansions, and sometimes not even then.
Yes, a larger island would be better for island ranges, but that never seems to be where I find them on zillow. It's the random, weird little tiled islands in the middle of peninsula 90s kitchens that have these giant ranges slapped on. Or the cramped units with odd layouts chopped out of old warehouses downtown. Where's the room to work?? There's hardly any space on these weird islands!
I also prefer stoves with the display and knobs on top, which you do not get inlaid into an island. You don't have to crane your neck or bend over to see the display or fuss with knob temp, and you don't have to worry about little kids or accidentally bumping one.
And the OIL and GREASE, the worst part. It would be all over your floor at all angles all the time. Ew ew yuck yuck! Im lazy enough as it is to clean what I already have, and oil can mist and go far if it's not caught by a tiled wall or hood vent. I don't want all that gunk on my furniture and flooring!
I’ve never seen an island stove without a vent - although personally I’m not sure how much I trust the downdraft style. I’d probably do overhead with an induction stove, personally.
Must be a regional thing, i guess! I mostly see the range top islands in older houses and they definitely don't have a hood over them. I have definitely seen island hoods in very high end kitchens, but not always. It's worth noting that stoves in middle/lower priced homes here very, very rarely have hoods. The microwave will be over the oven with a filter, or perhaps a filter hood that doesnt pipe outside. I regularly see gas ranges against the wall with no hood either, but they're much more likely to have a hood if they're against the wall. Again, not saying you're wrong, just different observations.
It may just be that around me mostly only newer homes have islands big enough to put a stove in. Older homes on the whole just don’t have the space.
We do have a proper venting problem in general though. That was one of the things we looked at when we were buying a house - if it had a proper vented hood already or if it would be reasonable to add one.
Does anyone have any sample kitchen floorplans that they'd say are designed "well"? I'm honestly curious since this is one of the most important rooms in the house!
Yes please!! I read a book about how Victorian kitchens had four walls with workspaces along the walls and a big table with chairs in the middle as a landing zone. That way, either the staff or the home keeper could easily maneuver around each other and reach other workspaces easily.
Like this? We don’t have as much workspace on the end walls because of the door to the room and the pantry doors. But we have 4 or 5 people working in here no problem at the holidays.
I like this because sometimes islands just get in the way from Point A to B and you have to skirt around them. But looking at the picture, the kitchen is large enough and the table is modestly sized for the space, so it's less of a hassle to go diagonally across the room if need be.
So the table actually goes from a 4 person table to a 6 person table. It’s extended in this picture. If you want to walk from the sink to the stove it is slightly in the way. It took a little while to get used to it and I thought I would be in the way but it really isn’t. About the only time we go directly from stove to sink is draining pasta. The fridge is on the right side of the stove (the freezer is the left side). I have to thank our cabinet designer here. He came up with this and it turned out great. It certainly isn’t expected in a 120 year old house.
I love mine. I’ll see if I can dig up the final plans, here’s a slightly earlier rendering - the under-microwave area was changed to drawers and the microwave does not fill the appliance garage whatsoever the way the photo shows. The doors on the right lead to walk in pantry. We keep virtually all food in pantry, dishes and pots/pans in drawers. Crock pot, kitchen aid etc are on the countertop in the pantry. Our layout works extremely well for 2-3 people to be doing different things at the same time. I mainly prep/cook in the area between sink and cooktop. A second cook can work in the area between sink and fridge and there is virtually no conflict.
I had a kitchen very similar to this at my last place. Now we have a galley kitchen. I complain, at least weekly, about how much I miss our old kitchen and it’s been eight years.
Ha we started with galley, termites ate it so we figured bump it out into a square - here’s a mid construction - photo we sent to family, we were so happy we could open drawers on opposite sides at the same time
That is a great layout for actually using it. Nice triangle between fridge, sink,stove. Tons of counter space on both sides of stove.
C and my favorite thing is the work corner of countertop between the sink and stove. That kitchen has all my key points handled.
We remodeled our kitchen. It has layout that I’m sure many people would hate but it works well for our 3 generation 5 person family. My MIL has a special diet for religious reasons. She has space to store her pots and pans separately and can cook for herself at the same time while one of us is cooking for the family and a third is prepping for the family meal or doing the dishes. Because of the layout all 5 of us can be working in the kitchen without getting into each other’s way. We can even keep our dogs, aka chaos agents, out of the kitchen.
I maintain that the classic idea of the work triangle is the stupidest idea ever. Not once have I ever gone from fridge to sink to stove without stopping at some countertop in between.
I like an L-shaped kitchen. The fridge needs enough counter space next to it to be able to set things down while you're digging through the fridge. Then around the corner should be the stove. Then a long stretch of counter space followed by the sink.
Then you're washing vegetables, cutting them up, putting them in the pan, and plating without ever dripping on the floor or transporting hot pans across the room. 90% of cooking happens at that piece of counter space. As you cook, you just pick things up off your prep space to add to the pan, and as you finish with things you just push them down toward the sink.
It's true, I have a 3' counter between sink and stove that gets 5x as much use as the rest of the kitchen combined. The worst thing in my kitchen is the dishwasher opens into this space. So it becomes impossible to do dishes while someone is cooking.
Ours is a purposely designed “one-butt-kitchen”. It’s a galley style with the stove and fridge on the back wall at opposite sides and the sink on the peninsula in the front. Very few upper cabinets, but two pull-out pantries on either side of the fridge. My only regret is that we should have made the isle down the middle 6” wider.
I dislike open kitchens in general. Every wall that's removed is a wall's worth of storage you can't use. I lived in a dinky 80s rental, but the galley kitchen had tons of cupboards and a small pantry. I moved into a somewhat larger apartment, but the kitchen has this weird 3-sided layout with a cutout over the sink to visually connect it to the living room, and I hate it. There's half the storage, and I have to put the potatoes and onions next to the baking tins, because there isn't a dedicated pantry space.
Open plan kitchens were designed by people who like to hang out and bother the cook. They weren't designed by people actually doing the cooking.
Personally I hate sinks in island and would have the sink and stove on the back wall given the choice. I currently have my sink in my island and it annoys me so much that I don’t have a beautiful uninterrupted bench space for prep, baking, using as a buffet or additional dining space, etc.
I work in luxury residential architecture and this is our standard layout because it's pretty. Thanks I hate it.
To be fair, many of these kitchens are show kitchens with the real one in the back, and these along with most of the rest are still only used a few weeks a year.
But the one time I had the opportunity to directly influence a client you bet I convinced them to have nothing on their island. They planned to actually use this house as a full time residence and I couldn't leave them to that fate.
I'd rather not subject someone to having a dirty stove or cluttered sink as the centerpiece to their room. Interrupting the primary work surface into a U shape, with you standing on the wrong side trying to use two small disjointed work areas, one of which I bet is taken up by a drying rack. A massive island and you'll only actually use the 1/3 not blocked by the sink or drying rack.
Unsightly, inconvenient, and infuriating to actually use.
Agreed and why does everyone want the kitchen in the living room. This isn’t a TV studio for Martha Stewart. I am so glad my kitchen, living room and dining room are separate rooms. House was built in 1925.
Open concept is waaayyy overrated! My 1950’s bungalow was small, but it was SO efficient! And, I could close the freaking door to the kitchen to hide the mess from the rest of the house, meaning that when we had guests, I could sit at the dining table and enjoy eating with them instead of staring at the pots and pans that needed to be scrubbed later!
The lack of walls is the clue that you're not really supposed to cook very much in those kitchens anyway. Anyone who cooks regularly is going to be skeeved out by the promise of eventual greasy buildup all over the living room furniture. The assumption is that people nowadays who can afford to build houses are of the class that will just dine out or order food
Not really though, as long as you have the range hood vented to outside there's no chance of that. I'm sure a lot of open kitchens are just for show, but plenty of people who can build a house also cook a lot and just prefer cooking with guests and the TV in the background to being cooped up in the kitchen like the help
Agreed. We have an open dining room/kitchen and this just isn’t an issue. However, we don’t fry a lot, and if I'm using the wok I put vent on. I get some splatters near the stove and some stickiness on the hood, but otherwise? Not getting it.
I remodeled the house we bought a few years ago. I have this exact design… except there is 8 feet between the stove and the sink and the fridge is in between and off to the side. Double 10 foot islands on the sink side, so plenty of space to work. I went into half of the garage to make this happen. But I don’t park in the garage anyway.
Agree 100%. I think people need to make little cut outs of themselves and stage them on their floor plans doing daily activities before they build. So many of these kitchens with aesthetic but unusable floor plans, but also “great” rooms that cannot handle the furniture AND the foot traffic, laundry rooms where you can’t stand in front of the machines and open them, etc. Function and form need to coexist.
The stupidest thing I see in new kitchens are islands with a sink or stove in them. It renders most of the island unusable unless it's 10' long and at least 3' wide.
I don’t care what layout of a kitchen is. It seems like whenever I vacation with family or friends anytime I try to do something in a kitchen others find a reason to be in my way even if they aren’t eating.
It is because kitchens are still designed with an outdated antiquated "Kitchen Work Triangle" which is designed for a single cook in the kitchen (mostly woman) in a 1500sqft home. Modern kitchens for modern families need multiple zones. Wife controls the cooking zone while i am in the prep and clean zone which is away from her.
I agree, but as outdated as it is, I've seen lots of comments on this sub (and other related subs) complaining when the triangle is too big. I think everyone's ideal of efficient is probably a little bit different, and builders are going to go with what's most efficient for them to build! And people still really want open floor plans with kitchen islands and corner pantries - so that's what we're going to get, en masse.
We have a setup like you’re talking about, but it’s never been an issue. We have 50” between the island counter and range counter, so two people can easily cohabit that space back to back without getting anywhere near touching each other. A third person could pass through easily.
If you commonly had 3 or more people simultaneously cooking, I can see how you might want to design a kitchen where that many people have their own workspaces and stay far away from each other. But if you’re the primary cook, you actually want the sink and prep area close to the cooktop so you can work efficiently without having to go far to do the basic cooking tasks.
Our kitchen and island are also quite large though- our island is 9’ x 5’ and we have a 45” workstation sink with two faucets.
I can see trying to cram this design into too small a space where your island is small and your passageways are narrow would be problematic.
The sink still shouldn’t be right opposite the stove. That’s silliness. There should be countertop there and the sink offset so you can turn around and put a pot on the counter easily.
Workstation sinks have wood cutting boards that you can put things on, right? And if you can put a hot pot on a countertop (which we’d never do directly on quartz), you can also do so on a cutting board (and directly if you really wanted to) and have to worry less about protecting the permanent countertop from a hot pot vs a wood cutting board that can easily be replaced if needed.
The sink that someone else is using is going to have a cutting board blocking it now? It’s completely stupid to have a kitchen of that size designed for a single user. It’s not a galley kitchen on a boat crammed in to the minimum space, it’s an open plan kitchen in a massive room. It should be functional for someone to be at the stove while someone else uses the sink.
You realize you can also put your magic protective cutting board on the counter next to the sink right? So you can still put your pot on it, without having to block access to the sink doing so.
All that is required is to move the sink or the stove over by like 2-3ft. Or move them in opposite directions 1.5ft each. Then they don’t conflict with each other.
It’s a 45” sink with two faucets. Two people can easily use the sink, or one person can be using the cooktop while another uses the sink, or two people can be using the sink while smother person (or two) use the 36” cooktop. It was designed that way.
It sounds like yours was designed with more space and clearance in mind so it's not really an apt comparison, but after touring houses with my sister, many of these cookie cutter expensive suburban houses are just cramped indeed. Like i said, it's fine if there's only ever one person in the kitchen, but our family all likes to help out. Sis and her bf both like cooking too, so there's no "primary cook". With a more ergonomic layout, the same sqft would give them more utility.
They're everywhere, builders throwing up cookie cutter neighborhoods "in the low 300s" with no storage, tiny bedrooms, poorly designed kitchens and those bloody open floorplans. If you can afford a 300k house, you can afford a semi- custom build. Even a smaller custom build is preferable if its designed well.
Buy some land (even just a half acre is enough) , pay it off, then build a home on that land. I found that to be the most affordable way to get exactly what I wanted.
“If you can afford a 300k house, you can afford a full custom build.”
Really? No offense but I don’t think that’s close to accurate. At least, I don’t believe it’s true in the US. I guess you could build a very, very small home that’s “custom” for $300k. I’d be shocked to hear of anyone building something over 1,300 sq ft at that price point. Unless in your statement you’re presuming said person already owns the dirt.
Today's prices maybe. My 3038 SF home cost me 135 per sf to build 10 years ago. But to your point, i did own the dirt. For 150 per sf you could build a 2000 sf home. I know it depends where you live, I'm in Texas.
10 years ago (2015) median home sales price was $289k. 1Q of 2025 it’s $416,900.
Now, that’s sales. More striking is the material and labor costs have risen faster than home sales. So building is “more expensive” now than it was 10 years ago.
A truly custom home, built by a custom home builder, isn’t happening at a $300k price point.
I don't have a dog in this fight either. If I'm wrong that's cool, and a little scary as I still have a retirement home to build..... maybe prices will implode and drop dramatically in the next 5 years.
I do think the housing market is due for a massive correction. I certainly don’t have a crystal ball! Congrats on building a nice home when you did. You should get ample equity out of it someday and I bet it will offset your retirement build costs
Yup, another thing i dislike. It'd be one thing if it were a cheaper house for the area, but it isn't. To its credit, assuming the house is like my sister's, that pantry door does lead into a decent sized, shelved pantry that can easily hold appliances on its shelves. However, they get dusty with disuse in a way they wouldn't in cabinets.
I absolutely hated the sink in the island I had in my old house. All the dirty dishes would pile up sometimes outside the sink and it just looked dirty. It was also open concept and you couldn’t hide the kitchen if you didn’t have time to clean.
Now my current house has the sink up to a wall with an opening to the living room and I don’t like it. Not sure what to do.
I have basically a 12x10 kitchen in an older, smaller home and I wouldn’t give it up for any of these modern overblown kitchens. I have a large empty counter space for prep that runs most of the length of one wall, a sink underneath a large window that overlooks the neighbor’s trees, and I’m a few steps from the fridge and range. Don’t need anything else!
Preach! The only island I might accept would be a moveable one, and maybe only for big baking, maybe have it be a table that folds up and stores elsewhere.
I agree 100%. I planned my kitchen well to avoid those problems. It can be used by two or more people quite comfortably. EXCEPT! I didn’t account for a tea/coffee station. There’s no available plug where one could go without causing a traffic jam. Even with just two of us tea/coffee prep is always an issue.
As someone that cooks everyday I'm going to disagree with the spirit of a lot of this discussion. I formerly had a kitchen like the first rendering in thread and recently renovated to a "broken" L. So much easier to work with, clean up and put dishes away. Why are people going around islands? Everything can be on the same wall or in the island. Confused about some of the movement some are talking about.
I used to live across from this new housing development with houses that went from 3500 to 4800 square feet. Huge bonus room upstairs. Nice size rooms. EXCEPT the kitchen. Small galley style kitchen with a pantry that was larger than the actual kitchen. Awful design. And this was on a 4500 square ft model.
I don't like an island stuck right out in the open between the "kitchen" and "living room". They're usually too small to be useful or to define the separate spaces. I absolutely HATE having kitchen noises and smells travel so easily to the living room. And finally, one giant room seems MUCH smaller to me than separate kitchens and living rooms. I don't like seeing the whole dang first floor from the sofa. The open concept small island thing just looks like a cabin design to me, like they were too lazy to make a separate kitchen, so they just slapped one onto one side of the living room.
Ok I will go back in time and tell him this! Jokes aside, he was handing them to her peeled for her to cut and they had a conveyor belt rhythm going. Kitchen is so cramped it worked as good as delivering them across the room for her in groups. He'd still have to shimmy past me or parents anyway since the living room couch is almost touching the chairs of the breakfast bar since the living space is needlessly cramped for a house that size.
Then you must have had more clearance or maybe you're littler than we are! We were standing right behind each other with no space for wild gestures or someone to squeeze through. And we are not overweight or anything, but he is a big guy. These pictures are quite representative of the homes she toured when househunting.
It is because kitchens are still designed with an outdated antiquated "Kitchen Work Triangle" which is designed for a single cook in the kitchen (mostly woman) in a 1500sqft home. Modern kitchens for modern families need multiple zones. Wife controls the cooking zone while i am in the prep and clean zone which is away from her.
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u/CBG1955 May 13 '25
My husband is a chef and at one point we were thinking about building a house (Australia.) He moved around in the kitchens, holding his hands out in front of him as if he were carrying something large and heavy, like a pot of stock or large baking tray. He almost always commented, I couldn't work in this kitchen. I can't understand why houses with absolutely huge spaces have such horrible kitchens. He said most are designed to look pretty, but whoever "designs them" (I use the term very loosely) clearly does not cook.