An island is a staple in kitchen design in open plan properties, allowing an extra isolated surface within the kitchen for food preparation, storage or sitting down for a family meal. It creates a great opportunity for contrasting or complementary design by providing that separate space within the room, allowing you to add a pop of colour, or continue the design through to the adjoining rooms. This will ensure that your kitchen has a stylish and practical design that makes it stand out. While the island kitchen does require a bigger space than most others, this extra room allows traffic to flow better and enables a great separation of spaces.

You can learn more about why kitchens have islands in our designated blog post.

Similar to an island, but requiring less space, a peninsula kitchen layout works in all the same ways, providing a way to interact with and see the adjoining room while preparing food or cleaning, a separate space away from the main run for food prep, and an extra space for seating. If you live in a smaller open plan apartment this could be a fantastic option, allowing for increased storage and an island-like design.

Beautifully simplistic, the L-shape kitchen allows for a spacious room with plenty of storage. Ideal for square rooms, the L can allow for an easy work triangle, with the hob, sink and fridge-freezer in a nicely spaced format. This kitchen layout contains all the advantages of a single-wall kitchen, only you get the great benefit of an extra wall to take advantage of. The extra space you have in the corner opposite the installation can be left free to provide an open feel or filled with a small table and chairs for dining, reading, or chatting. 

You can learn more about what you can do with a corner of a kitchen here.

U-shape kitchens provide an extension to the L-shape layout by bringing the kitchen installation around to all but one of the walls within the room. Generally, this kitchen layout is best used in larger rooms to ensure that the area of traffic between the units is sufficient. An advantage you gain from the U-shape layout over the L-shape is the ability to have multiple users at once. Due to the opposite sides being a good distance apart and having multiple worktops to prep and cook on, you can ask for the help you need preparing the family meal without the fear of collisions. 

You can get more inspiration about U-shaped kitchen designs with our blog post.

A brilliant option for kitchens on a budget, the galley layout is essentially a single wall kitchen, but doubled. This means it makes use of only straight units and has no closed off corners for your things to get lost in. Where the single wall layout intentionally leaves a wall bare for extra walkway room, this fills both long walls, giving you a massive amount of storage space and doubling your work surface, providing enough space for a family kitchen even in a smaller room.

You can find more galley kitchen design ideas here.

Overall then we see that the different types of kitchens are great for different scenarios. We hope that this has helped you figure out which one would be best for you! If you feel like you need pointers and advice on planning your new kitchen, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Our dedicated office team can provide the help you need. Contact us either via phone or email.