Planning a Kitchen for How People Actually Cook

The kitchen layout most commonly drawn — a compact work triangle between sink, hob and refrigerator, open to the living space — was developed for a particular pattern of cooking: one person, short sessions, moderate heat, and food that does not produce much airborne oil or steam.

A large number of Sri Lankan households cook differently. Two or three people work at once. Sessions are long. There is high-heat frying and tempering that aerosolises oil, and there is prolonged boiling that puts a great deal of moisture into the air. There may be a separate set of cookware and a separate routine for everyday cooking versus entertaining.

An open-plan kitchen designed on the imported assumptions, dropped into that pattern of use, produces a recognisable set of complaints within a year: the whole ground floor smells of last night's cooking, the ceiling above the hob is discoloured, the joinery has a film on it, and there is nowhere to put anything down.

None of that is a fault in open-plan living. It is a fault in the brief.

Ask what the household actually does before drawing anything

Six questions, asked directly, will determine the layout:

1. How many people cook simultaneously, on a normal day and when entertaining?
2. Is there daily high-heat frying or tempering?
3. Is there a separate wet or "dirty" cooking routine — grinding, cleaning fish, coconut scraping — that the household would rather keep out of sight?
4. Is there domestic help, and does that change who is in the kitchen and when?
5. How is the food shopping done — a weekly bulk shop or daily fresh buying? This sets the storage split between dry goods and refrigeration.
6. Where do people actually eat on a weekday?

The third and fourth questions are the ones that most often change the plan, and they are the ones least likely to be volunteered.

The two-kitchen arrangement, and when it is right

A great many households here function best with a split: a presentable front kitchen open to the living and dining space, and a separate, well-ventilated back kitchen where the heavy cooking happens.

This is not a luxury arrangement. Done modestly it is often cheaper than trying to make a single open kitchen cope, because the back kitchen can be simply finished and robustly ventilated while the front kitchen carries the joinery budget.

What makes it work:

• A real door between them, not an opening. The door is the whole point — it stops the oil and steam.
• The back kitchen genuinely ventilated, ideally with an external wall and cross-ventilation, not just an extract fan.
• The sequence sensible: the back kitchen should connect to the service yard, the bin store and the rear access, so deliveries and waste never cross the front kitchen.
• Enough in the front kitchen to be useful — a sink, a hob, refrigeration and worktop — so it is not a decorative pass-through.

Where the plot is too small for two kitchens, the same logic can be applied to a single kitchen: put the heavy cooking end against an external wall with strong extraction, and keep the sociable end — where people stand and talk — at the other.

Extraction is a structural decision, not an appliance decision

The single most common kitchen failure is extraction that was treated as a fit-out item and specified late.

Two things matter more than the hood's rated airflow:

The duct route. Extracted air must go outside, by the shortest and straightest route available. A recirculating hood with a charcoal filter does not remove steam or heat and does very little about oil; it is an acceptable solution only where ducting is genuinely impossible. Every bend and every metre of duct costs airflow. This means the hob position and the external wall have to be considered together, at plan stage, before the joinery is designed around them.

Make-up air. An extract system can only remove as much air as can get back in. In a tightly closed, air-conditioned room, a powerful hood will simply pull against a sealed envelope and move very little. Provide a deliberate path for replacement air — a transfer grille, an openable window on the far side, a louvred door.

Worktop, not triangle

The work-triangle rule assumes a single cook. With two or three people working, the useful metric is uninterrupted worktop and the number of people who can stand at it without colliding.

Practical guidance from projects that work:

• Aim for a continuous run of at least 900 millimetres of clear worktop between the sink and the hob, and another clear run on the far side of the hob. These are the two landing zones that get used constantly.
• Allow 1,100 to 1,200 millimetres of clear floor between opposing runs where two people pass. The 900 millimetre figure quoted for galley kitchens assumes one person.
• An island only helps if the aisle around it stays generous. An island squeezed into a room that cannot take it makes the kitchen worse, not better. If the aisle drops below a metre, take the island out and put the worktop against the wall.
• Give the wet cooking a dedicated zone with a deep sink, a drainer and a run of worktop, separated from the main preparation area.

Storage that matches how the household shops

A weekly bulk shop needs dry storage volume — a walk-in pantry or a full-height cabinet run — and less refrigeration than people assume. Daily fresh buying needs the opposite. Ask before specifying.

Two details that repay their cost:

• Full-height, full-depth pantry storage near the entry to the kitchen, so shopping is put away without crossing the cooking zone.
• A dedicated place for the appliances that live on the worktop — grinder, blender, rice cooker, kettle. These will be out permanently. Either give them a designated recess with power, or accept that the clear worktop in the drawing is not the clear worktop in reality.

The details that get value-engineered out and should not be

• Extraction ducting to outside. Discussed above. Never trade this away.
• A tall, splash-proof surface behind the hob. Tile or stone to a real height, not to the underside of a wall unit.
• A double bin, integrated, near the preparation zone. Waste separation only happens if the bin makes it easy.
• Task lighting under the wall units. The overhead light is behind the cook, so the worktop is in the cook's own shadow. Under-cabinet lighting is a small line item that changes daily use.
• Sockets, in quantity, in the right places. Count the appliances that will live on the worktop, then add four.

None of these are expensive. All of them are the difference between a kitchen that photographs well and a kitchen that is still pleasant to work in on a wet Tuesday evening in five years.