When designing or re-designing your kitchen the first thing you should consider is the layout of each area of the room and where your most used appliances will be placed within the space. At the end of the day, if your kitchen area isn’t practical for you to work in, you’ll end up spending considerably less time in what should be a homely central hub of the home. This is where the ‘golden triangle’ comes into play – a simple principle used by the majority or architects and interior designers (including us) which theoretically will leave you with an efficient and well designed working space, that allows you to complete those functional kitchen duties with little effort.
The primary tasks in a household kitchen are carried out between the oven, the sink and the refrigerator. These three points and the imaginary lines between them, make up what kitchen experts call the ‘work triangle’. By having these elements in relatively close proximity to one another you are utilising your space to the maximum and cutting down on wasted steps when moving around the room. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, such as when a kitchen only has one wall or when a person uses another appliance more regularly than the three stated. That’s where we come in as kitchen designers, to decipher how you as an individual work in the kitchen and how we can make it work most efficiently for you and your family.
So where did this golden triangle principle come from? The concept is a model developed in the 1940s by The University of Illinois School of Architecture, who aimed to address the efficiency of the kitchen space between the three focal points of the kitchen, as we explained above. By developing the work triangle, the construction of kitchens was standardised and costs were of course reduced. At the time kitchens were largely dominated by the woman of the household and the triangle was put into place to synthesise workflow in a one-cook kitchen. This all stemmed from Scientific Management ideology (also known as Taylorism) that Frederick Winslow Taylor championed from the 1880’s and onwards.
There are some specific recommendations attached to the work triangle that architects and interior designers take into consideration when designing a layout. Why don’t you layout your kitchen on a sheet of paper and see if your own kitchen follows these guidelines?
• All sides of the triangle should be more than 1.2m long and less than 2.7m long.
• The sum of all sides of the triangle together should equal between 4m and 7.9m
• Where possible, there shouldn’t be any major traffic flow through the central hub of the triangle. For example, if you were to incorporate an entertaining zone into your kitchen this should not have any involvement with the work triangle.
• A full height appliance or cupboard should not come between any two focal points of the triangle.
Of course the 1940s are now long in the past and plenty has changed since the principle came to light. We now cook and clean together, depend on different modern appliances and spend more time in the kitchen for hobbies such as baking. It is important to consider all aspects of your daily life and ensure these smaller details fit around the points of the triangle and within your normal working routine. To make life easier for yourself you can also separate your kitchen into zones around each work triangle focal point. For example, a dishwasher should be placed near a sink, utensils should be housed near your food prep area and it would also be handy to have a bin in between these areas to make an extremely user-friendly space. These areas should be kept separate from counters or islands where you would be likely to dine or socialise but ultimately the triangle works best when integrated on a personal level, to best match the needs of the client.
As a bespoke kitchen design company that believes in using the kitchen for cooking, socialising and entertaining we make it our mission to ensure that all of these aspects align to create a space that’s right for you. What do you think about the principle? Does your kitchen layout follow the golden triangle rules?
