How to design a small kitchen layout

In this article I will tell you how to plan your future kitchen yourself, what you need to pay attention to when planning, as well as tell you what materials to order the kitchen, so it would be stylish and relatively inexpensive. The article will be useful to those who are planning to order the kitchen by themselves without a designer. Let’s go

During the repair of the apartment, many people sooner or later ask a common question: “how to plan their kitchen, from what materials to order it and where to buy it?”

In fact, there are a lot more questions in the mind of customers, but today I’ll share tips that will help you to plan the kitchen yourself in advance, as well as help to decide on the kitchen materials based on your budget, so that the purchase of the kitchen will not “eat up” half of the planned budget for the entire renovation.

Buying a new kitchen unit is one of the most expensive furniture purchases, so in order not to overpay and save your budget, you should first of all start with planning the kitchen.

In fact, everything is not as difficult as it may seem at first glance, and by the end of this article you will see for yourself.

List of all necessary appliances

In order to plan the kitchen yourself, first of all we need to write out a list of all the necessary appliances for us. The fact is, not everyone uses dishwashers, double-barrel refrigerators, choppers and other appliances, so making a personalized list ahead of time is very important.

A common list of appliances:

  • Refrigerator;
  • Cooktop;
  • Oven;
  • Oven;
  • Microwave oven;
  • Dishwasher.

Room layout

Of course, everyone has a completely different layout, so there is no single pattern on which you can plan the kitchen, but in order to make it simple and understandable to you, I’ll show you all the steps on one example, based on which you can repeat all this yourself.

After we have written out a list of all the appliances we need, we need to arrange the furniture in the room. To do this we simply take a tape measure, measure our kitchen and transfer all the dimensions to the printed layout, there is absolutely nothing complicated about it.

If, for whatever reason, there is no layout in the apartment, then simply draw with a ruler and pencil to plan the kitchen on a simple sheet of paper in scale. You can take, for example, 1 square cell in a notebook for 10 cm, so you will understand the scale even easier.

Expose the boundaries of the modules.

Here everything is very simple. In most cases, the kitchen modules are used width 60cm and 45cm. For those who do not know what modules are, I will briefly explain, a kitchen module is a part of the kitchen set, divided by partitions of chipboard, of which in turn a kitchen is assembled.

On the printed or drawn out layout, we simply draw the boundaries of the proposed modules of the kitchen set. For simplicity, you can draw squares along the walls of 60×60 cm and if necessary apply modules of 45×45 cm.

Arrange the appliances that we wrote out earlier

Since the width of the refrigerator, sink, hob with 4 burners, oven, built-in microwave oven in most cases is 60 cm, we simply sign the household appliances in the resulting “squares”.

In case the kitchen is quite small, you can use the modules 45 by 45cm for a small sink, a dishwasher with a width of 45cm and a cooking surface with 2-3 burners.

Of course, to correctly arrange all the equipment at once most likely will not work, so it is better to print out several layouts for convenience.

A few simple tips:

  • Before you “install” the sink, make sure whether it will be convenient for you to wash dishes. Don’t put the sink in the corner of the kitchen, or set it up close to the refrigerator and cooktop. Ideally there should be work surfaces on both sides of the sink. In this case, it will be much easier for us to put the food that needs to be washed on the left and stack the washed food on the right of the sink.
  • The dishwasher is better to “set” in one straight line with the sink. In case we set the dishwasher through the corner, it will not be very convenient to use it. In the open position, we will block ourselves access to the sink.
  • If the kitchen is small, you should not install the oven in the furniture “column”, that is, at a height of 850mm from the floor. In this case it is better to install it under the hob and give 60cm for the work surface.

Choosing the materials and style of the kitchen

Of course, everyone’s tastes are absolutely different and everyone will have their own ideal picture. In order to determine the style of the kitchen, we simply open many people’s favorite “Pinterest” and make a selection of those interior solutions that are close to you. Based on these selections, the kitchen manager will have a much easier time figuring out what fronts and colors to offer you.

Scandinavian style kitchens

If you are close to the Scandinavian style, the most successful will be the facades with panels, gray or white. The fronts themselves are worth choosing from MDF with enamel. Thanks to the enamel, we can choose the color that we like and that fits the general color scheme of our interior.

The most successful facade handles in this style will be exterior handles. It is this solution will be the most budget-friendly compared to the integrated handles, besides it is just convenient.

The tabletop should be chosen with imitation of wood, and the most budget-friendly and aesthetically advantageous option would be a plastic tabletop based on chipboard.

Modern kitchen style

If you are close to modern style, the most stylish solution would be a combination of monochrome facades and facades with wood grain. Monochrome facades can choose MDF with enamel, and facades with imitation wood, with a plastic coating.

Of course the facades with PVC film will be much cheaper, but in time the film can come off the base of the facade, so such facades I would not advise to use.

Tabletop you can also choose a plastic based on chipboard. In fact, plastic tabletop with a quality coating does not look cheap, especially if its edge is equal to 90 degrees. If the budget does not allow you to buy a quartz countertop, then do not worry that the kitchen will look cheap, this is not the case.

Kitchen handles can be considered profiled metal or milled from the façade itself. Such handles visually blend in with the facade and generally do not catch the eye, but it is quite convenient to use them, if of course you have a luxurious manicure.

How to buy a kitchen?

In most cases, kitchen showrooms divide themselves into economy and premium segments. From my experience, I can say that the materials used in most cases, if not the same, then very similar.

For example, MDF fronts with enamel in a premium salon and a budget salon, in principle, will not differ. Therefore, if your budget is limited, then you should not pursue the brand and overpay, besides the kitchen is quite an expensive pleasure, even in the economy version.

Before you buy a kitchen, it is better to visit 2 or even 3 kitchen showrooms and get a proposal from each showroom on the price and timing of production. It is also worth clarifying the cost of assembling in advance, since this point not all managers sound out at the conclusion of the contract.

The cost of assembling the kitchen on average varies within 10% of the total cost of the kitchen, so this cost should also be considered when planning your budget.

Do not be shy to ask for a discount on the kitchen before buying. Many showrooms go out of their way to meet their customers, but if you do not ask for it, the likelihood that the manager himself will offer it is extremely small.

To plan a kitchen yourself is not as difficult as it may seem at first glance. You just need to take your time and not rush into buying it, especially if the budget is limited.