Home and Kitchen: 4 Ideal Layouts for Small Spaces

Today, living spaces like condo units and flats are being downsized, which challenges many young designers to create designs that are compact, functional and efficient. Now, more than ever, such layouts are given much importance. In Singapore, part of its people's daily lifestyle is entertaining, cooking and eating. With this, the kitchen is becoming a more vital area of their home or units. While beautiful finishes and professional-grade equipment score ample of points, the basic requirement of any good kitchen, when it comes to food preparation and cooking, is a seamless workflow.

Triangle is the Shape for All Your Kitchen Works

This simply means that there should be three main work zones in the kitchen: the storage zone where pantry and refrigerator are located, the preparation zone where you'll find the worktop and sink, and lastly, the cooking zone where oven and hob are placed. As a general rule, even for a small kitchen cabinet design, these different work zones should not be placed too far away from each other to avoid taking many steps as you prepare the meal.

To illustrate, this article presents some of the configuration options that you could try at your personal space.

• The L-shaped kitchen

This configuration is best applied for corners in small-to-medium sized areas. A design that allows a good traffic flow within the kitchen, less the disruption to the work area. Be prepared to use several cabinet hinges for this option.

• The gallery kitchen

This configuration is best applied for rectangular or narrow spaces. This is an option that promotes minimal movement in the work areas because most of the things are kept within the two different sides. As the term entails, this choice is more on the design kitchen cabinets, which makes it easier to present various art ideas incorporated in this part of the home.

• The island kitchen

This configuration is best applied for open and entertaining spaces. This option is known to be the most flexible because this unit can be used both as the cooking or preparation zone and as a food serving area. In addition, this area can also function as a design feature which makes it the showpiece of your flat.

• The U-shaped kitchen

This configuration is best applied for large spaces. This option offers a lot of counter top area, and in case you have a wide U-shaped layout, it's possible to include a central kitchen island. With a spacious kitchen area like this, you’ll probably invite your friends to come over your place more frequently.

The above discussed layout ideas will make it easier for you to design your personal space, especially if the key area of it will be the kitchen because it's part of your profession as a chef or simply because cooking is among the things that you enjoy doing. In case you'll be needing further information about this topic, you can always surf the internet and read related details. On the other hand, you can also interview your designer friend if you have one.