7 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Planning a New Kitchen
A new kitchen is one of the larger sums most households spend on their home, and it tends to stay in place for many years. That is why small planning errors cost so much. A drawer that hits the oven handle, a socket in the wrong place or an island that blocks the route to the garden will be there every day. Most of these problems are settled long before anything is ordered. Here are seven that come up again and again, with ways to avoid each one.
1. Starting with the look
Mood boards help, but a kitchen designed from photographs alone tends to work best in photographs. Start with how the room is used. Who cooks, and how often? Do two people cook at the same time? Where does the shopping get unpacked, where do children do homework, where does the dog sleep? Write down a normal weekday and a busy weekend. Those notes become the brief, and the brief shapes the layout. Colours, handles and finishes come afterwards, and they are much easier to choose once the plan is settled.
2. Treating the existing layout as fixed
Many people replace a kitchen in the same footprint because the plumbing is already there. Sometimes that is the right call. Often, though, moving the sink a metre, turning an L-shape into a galley with an island or taking down a non-structural wall makes the room far more useful for a modest share of the budget. This is the stage where a second opinion pays off. An independent kitchen designer is free to specify cabinetry, worktops and appliances from any maker, so the plan can follow the room and the household. Ask to see two or three layouts for the same space before you choose one.
3. Leaving too little room to move
Islands are popular, and a crowded island is one of the most common regrets. Check walkways with appliance doors and drawers fully open, the dishwasher included. Mark the outline of a planned island on the floor with masking tape and live with it for a few days. If two people need to pass each other with a hot pan, they need more space than a single cook does. Doors that open into the kitchen need checking in the same way.
4. Planning storage by volume alone
Counting cupboards says little about whether storage works. Deep drawers in base units are often easier to use than shelves behind doors, because everything is visible and reachable without kneeling. Think about where each group of items lives: pans near the hob, plates near the dishwasher, food near the preparation area. Tall larder units, or a pantry if space allows, take pressure off wall cupboards. Leave room for things that are hard to place later, such as the bin, recycling, trays and the small appliances you use every day.
5. Leaving lighting and ventilation until last
Lighting has to be planned before the first fix of the electrics, while walls and ceilings are still open. A good scheme layers general light, task light over worktops and the hob, and softer light for the evening. Ventilation deserves the same attention. For new work such as an extension, Approved Document F of the Building Regulations sets minimum intermittent extract rates for kitchens: 30 litres per second for a cooker hood and 60 litres per second for an extract fan elsewhere in the room. Ducted extraction needs a route to an outside wall, which affects where the hob can go. Electrics have rules of their own. Adding a new circuit, for example for an induction hob, is notifiable work under Part P, so it should be done by a registered electrician or signed off by building control.
6. Budgeting for cabinets only
The price of units is only part of the cost. Worktops, appliances, sinks and taps, lighting, flooring, plastering, decorating and any building work all add up, and VAT at the standard rate of 20% applies to most of it. Agree early what each quote includes and excludes, so you compare like with like. Keep a contingency for surprises behind old walls and under old floors, especially in older London houses. Decide where money matters most to you, usually the surfaces and mechanisms you touch every day, and where a simpler choice will do.
7. Ordering before the room is ready
Cabinetry is made to measurements, so the measurements must reflect the finished room. If walls are being moved, plastered or levelled, a final survey after that work avoids gaps and filler panels. The same applies to the order of trades: electrics and plumbing in the right positions, flooring decided before units go in, and worktops templated once the base units are fitted. Agree a clear sequence and one person responsible for it, whether that is you, your builder or a project manager.
All seven mistakes are cheap to fix on paper and expensive to fix on site. Spend time on the brief, test the layout, plan services early and check what every quote covers. A kitchen planned this way is easier to build and far more pleasant to live with for years to come.
