They say the kitchen is the heart of your home.  It is where the family comes together to not only eat, but spend quality time with each other.  To share a meal with family and friends and relax after a big day at work.

Since the pandemic, the kitchen has become so much more.  It is the Work-From-Home space, and the school classroom (and the bakery for sourdough bread!).

When designing your custom new home or extension it is important to start with the overall placement of the kitchen within the home first.  Rather than the finer details such as the benchtop and colour – this will come later, we promise!

Kitchen design is about getting the functionality of the kitchen in the overall scheme of your new home, as well as the functionality within its space.

Ash Davani, Project Manager, SBR Group.

Start the other way around.   You’ll be able to get your dream kitchen and make it an inspiring place to be – better than your wildest dreams!

Start your kitchen design here –

1. Decide on the location of your kitchen

Ideally the kitchen is the central place of your living areas.

It should be accessed easily between the main indoor family rooms and the outdoor spaces.   This enables family to easily go between the family rooms and have everything within reach when entertaining. Your layout needs to support how your family functions day to day.

Look at your overall space for the living areas and divide it amongst these rooms, ensuring that the kitchen is central.  Use open plan or doorways and openings to improve access. Alternatively, create nooks for cosier rooms.  Don’t think at all about the design of your kitchen here, the aim is to find its right place in the overall design.

Your alfresco area, even if it has its own BBQ kitchen, will still need access to the kitchen.  The movement through between these two areas makes for a natural transition from house to the party.

When you are in the kitchen, plan for a wonderful outlook through to the garden and pool (if you are lucky!) and offers a beautiful vista and welcoming invitation to enjoy the outdoors.

Have a good think about how your family interacts daily, to work out the location of the kitchen.  It’s not always about entertaining!

One of our clients wanted her kitchen to have a clear view and access to the swimming pool.  She wanted to be able to watch her children swimming in the pool to keep them safe while she cooked  and worked.  She told us later that the kids always got so hungry swimming.  The kitchen was perfectly located to give them snacks in the alfresco area without having dripping wet kids mess up the kitchen – a bonus!

We had another client that loved formal entertaining and wanted the kitchen with easy access to the dining room (this was a dining room to die for!), with wide doorways but ensuring she could close it off if need be.

2. Decide on the layout of your kitchen

Once you have the general layout of where the kitchen will be in relation to the other rooms around it, its time to start thinking about the layout of the kitchen.  This is all about movement – the movement of people going through the kitchen to the adjoining rooms as well as the movement of people when cooking and food prep.

(a) Planning the traffic through your kitchen

Every kitchen will have traffic flowing into them as people enter the kitchen.  As well as passing traffic, where they go through the kitchen to get to adjacent rooms.

Firstly, mark out the traffic areas between the adjacent rooms to your kitchen.  Once you can see the flow, ensure there is enough space for this movement AND the flow feels right for people to move between them.

Your aim here is to keep the main traffic from passing through the middle of your kitchen.

Don’t block high traffic areas around the periphery of your kitchen.    People tend to congregate in these areas and also dump shopping, school bags, sports equipment and other stuff in them, so you want these areas to be generous (and not get gridlocked!).

Hint: Don’t be afraid to rejig the location of doorways to get the correct flow.

By marking out the high traffic areas, you can now see clearly exactly where the kitchen boundaries should be – away from the high traffic passing through.

You now have the area to go to the next step –

(b) Kitchen design for the real work

You should now have a clear idea of the shape of your kitchen, as it will be the space that is left outside of the main high traffic areas.

Design for everyday living, not the times when you are entertaining.  While a stunning kitchen is great to show off to your guests, you’ll struggle with the layout on a daily basis.

Look at the flow within the kitchen layout – this is usually the space between the cabinets, island benches, and pantries.  Things to consider will be the number of people in the kitchen.  A house with 5 bedrooms could potentially have 6 people in the kitchen at once!

An island bench works well in most large kitchens as they give the kitchen two access points to the kitchen.  If one side is jammed with activity, others can enter the kitchen on the other side.  Galley kitchens work well in moving people along the cabinets as they cook.

Another thing to consider is the flow of activity while you are cooking.  This is the triangle so often talked about in kitchen design.

For example, if you think you have worked out a layout, pretend you are baking a cake or cooking your favourite dinner.  Follow the process of cooking within your new kitchen design.  Does the kitchen design have you walking back and forth many times to get ingredients from the pantry and fridge, the drawer for utensils and the oven?

The best kitchen designs are the ones that have you pivoting between the functions.  This is an efficient kitchen!

3. Decide on the aesthetics of your kitchen

Now that you have the location and layout of your kitchen you are free to do the decorating.  This is what many of our clients say ‘the fun part of kitchen design’ – choosing the colours, fixtures and fittings to create your amazing kitchen.

Generally speaking, the kitchen should match or tie in with the full design and style of your home.   By doing this, you will ensure that the kitchen merges beautifully with the feel, the adjacent rooms, and the layout of the house to become an amazing welcoming feature of your home.

If your home is contemporary, then a contemporary kitchen style will work best. A French Provincial home with look amazing with its French Provincial kitchen.  Remember you can go full on matching the style of the house or just introduce several features as a nod to the style, if you think it may be overkill.

Other things to consider with your kitchen design –

• Plan for a landing pad next to main appliances so you can rest hot saucepans, supplies from the fridge, or hot plates of soup from the microwave.
• Choose one thing to be the standout feature – usually the thing you see the most when you walk into the kitchen from its main entrance. Whether this is the benchtop with a mitred waterfall edge or your retro standalone stove, a mirrored splashback, or coloured cabinets, build your kitchen design from this feature.
• Ensure your benchtop and cabinetry is wide enough to accommodate your appliances. Most appliances are 600mm but some can be up to 700mm for cooktops and a fridge may be wider still. Check this!  You want all the appliances to sit flush with the cabinetry (not sticking out!).
• Put cabinets for glasses, and the drinks fridge near the outside edge of your kitchen so people wanting a drink don’t have to enter the kitchen and disturb the cook, just to get a drink. This is great when entertaining too, as it stops guests in their tracks.

Your architect will be able to help you with your kitchen design for your new custom home but it is always good to have a direction and thoughts about your design and layout for their design brief.

We have a team of architects and designers, who would be happy to help you with your designs, and help you get even more from your kitchen.  Give the team a call on 1300 676 166 or contact us here.