Your kitchen is divided into three work areas ― the sink, the cooking surface and the refrigerator. Together, these areas make up the “Work Triangle”. There are any number of guidelines for a Work Triangle, and a Reico designer can help you with them, but as a general rule, your kitchen should be designed so that no major traffic patterns cross through this area.

When considering how you want to move through your kitchen, you should also take Food Flow into consideration. Its’ five elements ― your buying habits, storage (both impacted by whether you shop in bulk infrequently or make many small trips to the store or both!), preparation, service and clean-up will all have an impact on the design of your kitchen and its ease of use.

Stand at the door and study your kitchen, and you will see that it divides itself into a number of “zones”.

• The food storage and display zone, for example should accommodate both dry goods and cold storage and be adjacent to the food prep zone.
• The food prep zone can vary greatly depending on the personal style of cooks, some focusing on spaces for appliances and others needing more space for storage.
• The cooking zone encompasses both cooking and storage of utensils such as pots and pans and should be easy to access from the food prep zone.
• Not every kitchen includes a built-in eating zone, but often this is the same space as your planning zone, doing double duty for eating, meal planning, homework and the like.
• Finally, your sink zone is a busy place for prep as well as cleanup. If your kitchen has only one sink, it should be across from the cooking surface and the refrigerator.

It’s important that the interaction of these zones is a consideration when you design.