Kitchen design tidbits to increase your storage space and efficiency, but decrease the size of your kitchen

As an Architect, I try to use the best means of design to make a home more efficient and well used for square footage. In this article, I cover kitchen design and how to make it more efficient in use and storage, make it feel more open than a standard kitchen, but do it in a smaller size (square footage costs money).

I am a firm believer in the “Open Floor Plan” which has fewer walls and doors, with connecting rooms as open visual space. Keeping the Great Room, Dining Room, and Kitchen “open” (meaning no walls between them) helps all rooms “feel bigger.” The removal of the wall helps facilitate open communications between rooms. You don’t feel isolated in the kitchen when the barriers are removed from the wall and therefore people don’t have to come into the kitchen to talk to you. They can do this from outside the kitchen area.

Keep your ceilings high by putting up scissor beams. You can make your walls 8 feet tall, but adding the scissor framing (with a 13- to 14-foot peak) gives you plenty of visual space and a less-confining feel. And put a skylight in the kitchen. The opening of a skylight can be much larger than the skylight itself. Get the opening from the top of the roof to the edge of the wall and position the skylight near a perpendicular wall so it spreads light throughout the kitchen. Put a few “niches” in your tall walls above the 8′ line for greenery or statues. Place “puck” lights in these alcoves for accent lighting.

Use 2′ deep tall cabinets instead of raised cabinets. Cabinets that are 2 feet deep and 7 feet tall (or 8 feet tall) are also known as pantry or utility cabinets. With fixed shelves, they hold 4 times more stuff than a top cabinet. Place a line of tall cabinets along one back wall and near the opening to the kitchen area. By having a 2′ wide, 2′ deep, and 7′ tall cabinet near the kitchen opening (usually next to the dining area), you can store all the glasses, plates, platters, and bowls you use on a daily basis. . People don’t have to go into the kitchen to get the dinnerware to set the table like you would the upper cabinets.

By using only 3 tall cabinets (2′ deep by 7′ tall) in the back of the kitchen and the open floor plan, this allows the rest of the kitchen to have 36″ tall lower cabinets and countertops, no upper cabinets. The upper cabinets (and associated wall) give you an incredibly spacious feeling. The kitchen is not that narrow. Windows and natural light come from other room windows and skylights, which means you don’t have to waste valuable kitchen wall space for windows. Position sink and stove to face open rooms .

In kitchen corners, install cabinets at 45 degrees to adjoining cabinets instead of a “blind” or “lazy susan” cabinet. While a 45-degree cabinet does have some dead space, it uses more space than a lazy susan, primarily because the cabinet’s shelves and drawers are square and a lazy susan is round.

Place a pantry in the corner between your tall cabinets. It doesn’t have to be very big (4′ x 4′) and being in the corner will use up all the “dead” space in the corner. The pantry would have a 2′ opening at 45 degrees to adjoining cabinets. Pantry walls can be framed in a 2×4 with 3/4″ MDF or drywall, but the wall should not be higher than the height of the tall cabinets. This allows crown molding (if used). ) also use in pantry Have pantry open at top, especially if there is a skylight above, to allow daylight into pantry Have shelves from floor to top of wall Place a “cabinet door” (same as the rest of your tall cabinets) at the pantry entry, not a frame door like you’d use in the bedroom.

In the pantry, install a counter with 4 electrical outlets. This is where the coffee pot, toaster, electric can openers, etc. will be permanently located. It keeps them off your kitchen counters, but they are always available for use. There’s no need to store them in your cabinets and no need for garage cabinets for appliances. This leaves the main kitchen countertops “clean” (with nothing on them) and more open for the food prep you need to do.

Place an 8″ counter top above your counters (i.e. 6″ wall, 2″ thick counter top). In an “open floor plan” concept, this 8″ tall conceals a “messy” kitchen counter from view of other rooms. It also gives you plenty of room for multiple outlets in the 6″ wall areas. The 6″ high wall is just the right height for the 6″ ceramic tile. The counter top is 44″ (elbow height), a perfect height for propensity. This allows your guests to “lean back” at the counter (outside the kitchen) and talk to you while you prepare the food (in the kitchen). It’s also a good height for serving food or for high stools as a breakfast bar. Not all counter tops have to have some width. Some sections may be 9″ wide (kitchen partition top only), while other counter top sections may be 24″ wide, for serving food or as a breakfast bar.

Now… I talk about this part last because different customers use their kitchens differently, and each person has their own tastes. I’m not talking about size (although it’s related), but about how many people you want in a kitchen. Some clients want everyone in the kitchen, including guests and family members, to help cook or process the food, which means a larger kitchen to serve people. Others don’t want anyone but a few people in the kitchen, so they don’t bump into people to finish their food, which means a smaller, more efficient kitchen.

Most modern home designs have the kitchen open to the garage or back door and open to the living room and/or other rooms, such as breakfast areas, dining rooms, or hallways. This means that the kitchen has multiple openings to handle these functions. Some kitchens also have “island” cabinets/countertops with two or more openings. All kitchen openings allow people to enter, stand in, or pass through the kitchen from Point A to Point B somewhere else in the house. Also, one of the quirks of our human psychology is that eventually everyone ends up in the kitchen. This design concept uses the kitchen as a “traffic corridor”. These kitchens need a large amount of space to handle the volume of traffic. Again, some customers love the flow of people in and out of the kitchen. They just need a bigger kitchen space for all of this to happen.

Other customers think that the “traffic corridor” kitchen concept “clogs” the kitchen with unnecessary and unwanted people. Count me in the “keep unnecessary people out of the kitchen” category. I like to keep the kitchen open and inviting, I just don’t want extra bodies while food is being prepared. By keeping extra bodies out, the kitchen can be made smaller and more efficient, which means fewer steps between the refrigerator, stove, and sink.

Keeping people out of the kitchen is very easy to do in your design, just make it difficult for them to get in. Use a wraparound countertop with only one (1) countertop opening into the kitchen and locate that opening in the most difficult place to enter the kitchen. This, along with the “open floor plan”, is the most effective way to prevent unwanted foot traffic in the kitchen. The individual entrance to the kitchen will psychologically keep them out of the kitchen area, while the open floor plan (no walls) allows you to communicate with family and guests, while keeping them out of the kitchen.

With the little things I’ve discussed above and keeping people out of the kitchen, a 16’x10′ or 12’x12′ kitchen size is very effective, with plenty of storage space. By making the kitchen a “traffic corridor” for people to pass through, the kitchen would have to double in size, and you are not gaining storage space with that size because all the openings in the kitchen are consuming what could have been used for cabinets

When it comes to lighting, most kitchens have one main form of lighting (or a combination of these).

A. Light on ceiling fan
B. “Can” lights on the roof
C. Under cabinet lighting (usually puck lights or fluorescent strips)

I generally reject all these lighting concepts. With a ceiling fan light, you always have the light at your back, which means you’re casting shadows over everything you do on the counter. Can lights are “energy hogs” because they cut large holes in the insulation and use inefficient incandescent lighting (usually 75 watts). I don’t use upper cabinets, so I eliminate under-cabinet lighting, which is sometimes expensive

With the high ceilings of a scissor frame, I like to use MR16 adjustable light fixtures, not “can” type lights. MR16s are generally referred to as “strip” lighting. However, you will want to use a “plate” instead of a “strip” for the accessory connection. Using a plate, the MR16 uses a standard electrical box, so a smaller hole in its insulating blanket compared to a “can” light, and they pump out twice the light for less wattage (typically 50 watts) than a “can”. light. MR16 accessories can be very small (so you won’t see them) and not very expensive (about $20). The MR16’s are adjustable which means you can aim the light where you want. A light “can” aims the light perpendicular to the ceiling. On a sloped roof, that’s not good. Position your lights above the counter to eliminate shadows, across your main work areas (sinks, range, cutting and prep areas) and then distribute them evenly across the rest of your countertops. You don’t really need lights anywhere other than for accent lighting. Lights over the counters will suffice, assuming the kitchen is smaller.

If you would like to see some examples you can go to my website http://youngarchitectureservices.com/home-architect-indiana.html and click on any of the floor plans and zoom in on the kitchen area. There are also photos of the kitchen in the “Interior Design” section of the website. Larger scale images of a kitchen are on the “Home Page” under “See More House Photos”

I will talk with you later,
Brian