Top 4 Kitchen Design Complaints

No matter how comfortable the other rooms in your house are, people still gather in the kitchen. It hosts conversations, homework, family meals and much more, so it needs to keep up with daily life while still looking beautiful.

Here are the kitchen design complaints we hear most often from homeowners, plus practical ways to fix them.

1. A Poor Kitchen Layout

In many older homes, the kitchen was a closed-off room, separate from the dining and living rooms. With open floor plans so popular, that segmented layout leaves many homeowners unhappy. Ways to open things up:

• Remove or open walls. This can mean taking out a load-bearing wall and adding a beam, or simply cutting a pass-through above the counter or widening a doorway.
• Blend paint colors with the rest of the house.
• Run the same flooring from the kitchen into adjoining rooms.
• Plan around your lifestyle, including how you cook and how many cooks share the space.

Weighing your options? Read the pros and cons of open floor plans.

2. Traffic Within the Space

Today's kitchen is a place to entertain and connect, but above all it is still a place to cook. The kitchen work triangle is the path between the refrigerator, sink and stove, and it needs enough room to work comfortably whether you cook solo, with a partner or with kids running through.

Islands add workspace, storage and seating, but not when they block the triangle. Common guidelines:

• Each leg of the triangle should be roughly 4 to 9 feet.
• All three legs together should total about 12 to 26 feet.
• Household traffic should not cut through the triangle.
• Nothing should block a leg of the triangle. If something does, try shrinking or moving the island, or reworking the triangle by putting the sink or cooktop in the island.

3. Insufficient Storage

A lack of storage is one of the most common complaints in a poorly designed kitchen. Clutter keeps piling up, but there are simple ways to add storage:

• Generous upper and lower cabinets planned by a design-build expert to make the most of any size room.
• Pull-out units such as corner organizers, spice pull-outs and drawer inserts.
• A hardworking island with drawers, small cabinets and hidden racks to keep appliances and tools off the counters.
• A pull-out trash and recycling cabinet so these bulky essentials stay tucked away.

4. Low-Quality Ventilation

Without good ventilation, cooking odors, grease and steam linger in the room and even on your clothes. A few tips:

• Choose the best range hood you can afford, and make sure the ducting is sized correctly for it.
• In an open-concept kitchen, pick a hood with a quiet motor so people can still talk while you cook.

Fix Your Kitchen Frustrations

Frustrated by too little storage or a layout that does not fit your life? Browse our kitchen remodel projects for inspiration, then call Tracy Tesmer Design and Remodeling at 678-450-1700 or contact us online for a consultation.