The mistakes that keep coming back in kitchen planning
The things you do not see in photographs but feel every day: working distances, storage that does not match what goes into it, and lighting added last.
- Most common
- Storage planned by the metre, not by what goes in it
- Costliest to fix
- Sink, hob and fridge in the wrong places
- Most neglected
- Lighting
In short
Planning storage by the metre instead of by contents
You can build a kitchen with metres of cabinets that still has nowhere to put anything. It happens when you plan area rather than contents: how many pots there are, where the mixer lives, how tall the tallest jar in the kitchen is.
That is one of the many questions I ask during the planning, and it sounds small. It is not. It sets shelf heights, drawer depths and where it makes sense for a door to open.
Working distances that look fine on a drawing
The sink, the hob and the fridge are the three points you walk between all day. On a drawing they can be spread out neatly and symmetrically, and in practice every meal becomes a walk.
The reverse holds too: a continuous, generous run of worktop between sink and hob makes working in the kitchen efficient, comfortable and genuinely enjoyable. Clients tell me they started cooking more, because cooking in the new kitchen is so much more fun.
Leaving the lighting until last
Lighting gets pushed to the end because it does not show on a plan, and you end up with a kitchen where you stand in your own shadow over the worktop.
Light under the wall units, light inside a niche and separate light over the island are part of many small decisions that belong in the plan before the electrician, not after.
Choosing materials on a screen
A colour on a screen is not the colour that will be in the house. Light, the direction of the window and the existing floor change it completely, and a matte and a gloss finish in the same shade are two different materials.
So I hold samples against the actual wall, at the hour the room is really used. It sounds trivial, and it is the step that saves the most regret.
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