The single run
One wall · galley kitchen's simpler cousin
Everything — sink, hob, fridge, storage — along one wall, usually in a room that also has to do something else.
Right for a flat, a utility-kitchen, an annexe or a room where the other three walls are doing more useful work. It is the cheapest layout to service because every pipe and cable lands in the same wall, and it is not a compromise if the run is long enough.
Watch for
Under about 3.6 metres of run, something has to give — normally worktop either side of the hob. Decide which of the three you will sacrifice before you start, rather than discovering it at the drawing stage.
The galley
Two facing runs
Two parallel runs with a corridor between them, wet side on one and hot side on the other.
Still the most efficient kitchen ever devised for one cook, and common in Victorian and Edwardian terraces around St Albans where a back addition sets the width for you. Everything is within a pivot rather than a walk.
Watch for
The gap between the runs wants 1.2 metres — under a metre and two opposing doors or drawers cannot be open at once, which you will notice every single day.
The L-shape
Two walls, one corner
Cabinetry down two adjoining walls, leaving the rest of the room free for a table or for through-traffic.
The safest layout in a family house, because it keeps the working area tight while leaving a natural place for the table. It also copes well with a room that has to be walked through to reach the garden.
Watch for
The corner is where money goes to die. A plain corner base unit with a fixed shelf loses roughly half its volume to the back — specify a proper corner solution at the drawing stage or accept it as a cupboard for the slow cooker.
The U-shape
Three walls
Three runs of cabinetry wrapping the cook, often with the sink under the window on the middle run.
The most storage and the most worktop per square metre of any layout, and superb if the kitchen is a kitchen rather than a kitchen-diner. Two corners means two corner solutions, but you get an enormous amount back.
Watch for
Needs around 3 metres of internal width to avoid feeling like a cockpit, and it does not want to be a route to anywhere else — a U-shape with a door in the open end stops working the moment somebody walks through it.
The island kitchen
The one everybody asks for
Perimeter runs plus a free-standing block, with either the hob, the sink or nothing at all in it.
Genuinely transformative in an open-plan room, because it turns the cook to face the family instead of the wall. Whether it earns its space is a question of circulation, not of taste.
Watch for
You want a metre of clear walkway all the way round, and 1.2 metres on any side someone will stand and work at. Putting services in the island means routing water, waste, gas or power under a solid floor — possible, but it is a decision to make at the drawing stage, not after the screed is down.
The peninsula
The island for a room that cannot take one
A run that projects from the perimeter and stops, giving you a worktop return and a breakfast bar without the clearance an island demands.
Nine rooms in ten that want an island and cannot have one should have this instead. It gives you the same social geometry, the same extra worktop and the same informal seating, and it only needs clearance on three sides rather than four.
Watch for
The end of the peninsula is a hip-height corner in a walkway. Round it, soften it, or put the seating on that face — a sharp square return in a busy family kitchen collects bruises.
The broken-plan kitchen
Open, but not entirely
Kitchen open to the living or dining space, but separated by a change of level, a part wall, a run of full-height cabinetry or a structural opening rather than by a door.
The answer for people who love open-plan until they have lived with the noise of a dishwasher during a film. It keeps the light and the sightlines and gives the cooking smells and the mess somewhere to be.
Watch for
Extraction stops being optional the moment a kitchen opens onto soft furnishings. Specify the extractor by the volume of the whole space, not the size of the hob, and run it ducted to outside if the structure allows it.
