Kitchen planning: five layouts and how to choose
The shape of a kitchen is decided by the room, not by taste: the floor area, the width of the walkway and the points where the water, the drain and the ventilation already are. There are five layouts we build. Each has its own minimum floor area, and that is where the conversation starts.
The single-run kitchen: 2 to 6 metres
The whole working run goes along a single wall. It is the answer for a narrow room, and for a room where there is nothing to put on the second wall. The run is two to six metres long: shorter than that and the worktop disappears, longer and the empty steps between the sink and the hob start to add up.
It is also the simplest kitchen to plan: one wall, one line of services, no corners.
The corner kitchen: 2×2 to 4×3 metres
The most common layout in Estonian flats. Two runs meet in the corner and give noticeably more worktop on the same floor area than a single run does.
The inside corner is the place that easily turns into dead storage. We cover it with Kesseböhmer corner mechanisms: the contents come out whole, and nothing has to be reached for at the back.
The U-shaped kitchen: from 12 m²
Three runs on three walls. The most worktop and the most storage of any layout, and the cooking separates itself from the rest of the room — nobody has to queue behind anyone.
It needs twelve square metres or more. In a smaller room the three runs close in on each other and the walkway between them ends up narrow.
The G-shaped kitchen: when there is no room for an island
That is our name for the layout with a peninsula. The working run carries on into the room, but one end of it stays part of the kitchen: an island stands on its own, a peninsula does not.
The peninsula takes on the island's jobs: extra worktop, storage, and somewhere to sit. It needs less clear space around it, which is why it works out in a flat more often than an island does.
The island kitchen: from 20 m²
An island stands clear, and it has to be walked around on every side — hence the floor area it asks for. It is either a working island, with the sink or the hob in it, or a bar island with just the top and the seats.
A single island covers three things at once: worktop, storage and a place to eat. The extractor above it is a ceiling or a canopy model — the kind built into a wall cabinet does not fit here, because there is no cabinet above an island.
The small kitchen
The first thing to look at instead of an island is the G-shaped layout: it gives the same and takes less. The place to eat can be moved out of the working area — onto the windowsill, for example.
Plan for built-in appliances from the start: the niches for them are standardised, and they pack into the room's dimensions more tightly than freestanding ones. In standard flats we allow for walls and floors that are out of true, hide the pipes inside the carcasses and trim the end units to fit on site — none of that shows on the plan, and in a small kitchen it is exactly those centimetres.
Send us the room plan
That is where it all starts: the wall dimensions, the windows, the doors, the water and ventilation points. A hand-drawn sketch is enough.