It’s Always Best To Plan Your Layout

If you’ve decided to get in touch with Maryland contractors to renovate your kitchen, one of the most important things you can do before buying appliances or looking at floor tiles is to think about the layout of your kitchen and whether you want to optimize it.

A kitchen, after all, is a workspace. And in the same way that people will arrange a home office in different ways to suit their preferred working style, this is even more the case in food preparation in a kitchen. So if you’re buying a home that doesn’t have a kitchen layout to your liking, or you’ve been living in a home for years and have saved enough to final remodel, how should you go about this?

The Zone Method

One way to layout a kitchen is to think of the kitchen in terms of zones. What are the most common “traffic routes” that people take in the kitchen when using it? For example, do you have children frequently making trips to the fridge to raid it for food? One zoning idea will be to keep the fridge some distance away from the stove if that’s the case. That way, if someone is preparing food at the stove, children don’t run the risk of getting in the way while heading to the fridge for a glass of milk.

The same is true with other activities such as making coffee, snacking, or even doing homework. This is an ac-tivity in the kitchen. Organize your kitchen according to where the functions occur.

The Triangle

The classic kitchen layout describes a “triangle,” which is the path between the stove, refrigerator, and sink. However, for people that want to get the most out of their kitchen, especially for families that prepare food to-gether, there’s a wrinkle to be added to this.

Putting in an island counter effectively doubles the available workspaces, especially if a sink is also installed in that counter. This can make a huge difference in food preparation, primarily how “traffic” must be handled in the kitchen when two or more people are working simultaneously in the same space. There’s a reason traffic control is crucial in restaurant kitchens!

Planning Ahead

If you want to make sure your kitchen is designed to your satisfaction, take some time to work things out. You can work with an architect before you talk to Maryland contractors and have blueprints drawn up. If you don’t feel like working with an architect, there are many kitchen planning tools and other types of software available for use or purchase.

For example, today, you can digitally work out your kitchen layout in a 3D digital environment. With the right software, you can even put on a virtual reality headset and step “inside” your planned kitchen to see how you feel about the spacing and whether it’s right for your needs.

When it comes to your kitchen, don’t leave anything up to chance. Planning with your Maryland contractors gives you the best chance of ending up with a kitchen you’ll love using for the years to come.