Among designers, maintaining a kitchen triangle is a time-tested way to achieve maximum efficiency in your kitchen. Regardless of the shape of your kitchen, you can get the perfect relationship between the sink, refrigerator and hob to work in the kitchen easily. When you rework your kitchen, keep this concept in mind for functionality - although modern kitchens are more and often the site of other family activities.
The origin of the kitchen triangle concept
Developed in the 1940s, the concept of the working triangle emerged from a time when movement studies were popularized around the turn of the century and modified by the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois to become a standard construction process. At the time, the triangle was appropriate for the kitchen with one cook.
The idea of the triangle was to identify three areas of the kitchen and recognize that for most food the chef would pull it out of the refrigerator into the sink, where counter space is usually located, and then take food to the stove for cooking. Although the triangle is defined in an imaginary line, each of its lines must be between four and nine feet, so that the total length of all three legs ranges from 12 to 26 feet.
To leave this free space, there should be no garbage cans, cabinets, dishwashers or other obstacles; doing this might mean having a smaller pair of doors, rather than one big door for the cabinet. Even if the kitchen is a room that others in the house pass along the path to another, the path of the triangle must be unhindered.
The most popular kitchen forms are straight, U-shaped or L-shaped. While small, straight galley kitchens can be a problem of the triangle, if the refrigerator, sink and stove are on the same wall, any form of kitchen lends itself to this organization of working space.
Changes in kitchen planning
Over 75 years since the concept of the triangle became the basis of kitchen design, everything changed with kitchens. As the houses get bigger, they have kitchens. Now they can have islands in the center, more and more devices, backup devices and sinks, as well as many working areas. To accommodate this development, designers consider a space for defining areas of logical work that may correspond to smaller triangles.
In the kitchen there may be a place for rolling out dough and baking, as well as a coffee bar or sink for cooking or a large number of counterweights for cooking other food. As a result, many designers now see kitchens as a series of several triangles, where some components, such as a refrigerator or sink, can be common. Others have set aside the idea of a kitchen triangle as a necessity and focus on kitchen areas for cooking, baking, cooking and cleaning.
The goal of the work triangle is to make work in your kitchen more efficient. When you decide that you need to upgrade your workspace, find a contractor who will design and present to you a layout that includes a convenient kitchen triangle.
