When considering a kitchen redesign, before looking at desired materials, appliances or other fixtures, you need to consider the zones of a kitchen. This may be a new idea for you, but a kitchen is broken down into several different zones. Looking at how each section works within the kitchen and for your own personal needs is essential and will help you develop a better working plan to move forward with. So while selecting new appliances and cabinets is fun, you need to make sure you have the right zones ahead of time.

What are the Zones?

There are five key zones when it comes to kitchen planning. These are:

• Consumables
• Non-consumables
• Preparation
• Cooking
• Cleaning

Most of these are rather straight forward. The cooking zones includes your oven, stove top, microwave, steamer and all cooking utensils you need for preparing the food. Preparation is the area where you’ll work to ready the food. This is where to be where you keep your knives, cutting board, mixing bowls and small electrical appliances. Following this is the cleaning zone. It includes the sink, dishwasher, garbage disposal and the area where you keep all of your cleaners.

The last two zones are consumables and non-consumables. Consumables is where you keep all of your food. This is going to include the refrigerator and freezer. It will also include your pantry area. Non-consumables is where you’ll store your dishes, cutlery, plus odds and ends (like the good ol’ fashion “junk drawer” where you toss the random pens, paperwork, scissors and everything else you need on hand but aren’t sure how to separate).

How Much Room Do You Need

Now that you know how to break down the kitchen into five different zones, you need to look at how much room each needs. You already have the appliances in the different sections, so this cuts down on the available space you have. Now it is necessary to look at the remaining space and identify what is crucial towards having the kitchen you’ve been dreaming of. By taking into consideration these specifics, it becomes that much easier to have an excellent design plan before moving forward.

Having a solid plan before any kind of re-design or renovation is a must. By breaking down your kitchen into five different zones, you will be able to clearly see where you need your additional space and this will also help you with your appliance selection

For more information on kitchen planning check out these great resources here.