Home Kitchen Minimalis

Invest in an island
An island can massively improve the functionality of a kitchen, providing additional work, storage and even dining space. Often, islands are built into a kitchen, but they don’t have to be. A freestanding design could be just the answer for your first kitchen, becoming a sociable focal point with the advantage of being portable, too, so you can take it with you to future homes.

Supplement the storage
Even if the kitchen in your first home is fitted, there may still be an underused corner that you could pop a piece of storage in. Think outside the kitchen box, too, and source items that may not have been specifically designed for a cook space, such as an old chest of drawers.

See how to give your kitchen space a dash of vintage flair

Create a focal point
Fitting a new kitchen is a real budget muncher, so maybe you’re not ready to change yours just yet. No problem! Instead, keep your worktops clear so your units look as neat and streamlined as possible and create a gorgeous focal point in another part of the room. Paint a feature wall in an on-trend colour, or simply spread a beautiful cloth on your table to lure the eye towards the pieces and colours that you love.

Source vintage kit
If you are starting from scratch, with nothing but the bare minimum of kitchen utensils, crockery and cutlery, think about shopping second-hand for additional pieces. Vintage tins, old sets of silver cutlery, scales, pans and crockery are abundantly available in vintage stores and markets. They often cost very little, but will bring unique personality and a practical boost to your kitchen.

Divide (and conquer) your drawers
Even if you don’t have a pantry, drawer organisers are a great way of making sure things like herbs and spices are easily to hand when you’re cooking. They look stylish, too, so no more messy drawers.

There are lots of different designs and combinations out there, or consider using sock or jewellery drawer dividers to create different depths and sizes, depending on what you’re storing.

Repurpose
Be creative! Here, specially designed pull-out units have been made for trays, but you could use magazine files for smaller trays and other slim items. Finding designs in the same colour as your pantry or cupboard interior will help to keep an uncluttered look, and will also look more ‘designed’.

Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here A young family
Location West London
Size 7m x 5.5m
Designer Charlie Kingham of Charlie Kingham London

The space had already been extended, but the previous kitchen was rather small. ‘The clients wanted a larger kitchen that fully utilised the space,’ explains Charlie Kingham. ‘A pillar in the centre of the room was also removed and a box frame put in to make it completely open-plan, so it was quite an extensive building project,’ he adds.

Kingham included an island to increase the sociability of the space. ‘It was mainly to do with the couple having small children,’ he explains. ‘We wanted to create a space where people could interact, but that was also adaptable. The kids can sit up there and do homework without being shut away from the rest of the room.’

Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here A couple with visiting grown-up children
Location Oxfordshire
Size 21 sq m
Kitchen designer Marcus Watkins of bulthaup by Kitchen Architecture

Designer Marcus Watkins wanted to create a juxtaposition and play with the contrast between the old and the new. ‘We wanted to keep it contemporary in terms of furniture design, while highlighting the period architectural details,’ he says.

The kitchen sits in an extension that was newly built during the renovation. The property on the left is the original coach house, with a period thatched cottage to its right. On the far right is the new extension, perpendicular to the original property. Works were undertaken throughout by the owners.

Watkins’ concept was to create a design that felt more like a piece of architectural furniture than a traditional kitchen.

There are two simple blocks of furniture – the wall run and the island. ‘This meant we could treat them slightly differently,’ says Watkins. The owners chose a soft, warm grey for the wall run, which sits comfortably with the timber elements.

The tall run is the technical block, home to the fridge-freezer on the far left, the shuttered cupboard, and a stack of ovens – a steam combination, a full-size oven and a warming drawer. ‘This relatively small area works very hard,’ Watkins says.

At the end of the wall unit is an opening that leads through to a utility space, designed by the owners.

Ovens and warming drawer, Gaggenau.

Check out 10 kitchens that break the mould

The island is in Alpine White, which suits the contemporary space, with a breakfast bar in olive wood to break up the white expanse. There are cupboards below the bar that open on a touch latch to keep the lines clean.

b3 system cabinets and worktops in 10mm laminate, bulthaup.

‘The olive wood has a lot of movement and floweriness to it,’ says Watkins. ‘It’s a contrast to the purity of the white island.’ The worktop is cut around the wooden bar, which is fitted onto the carcasses.

Sociability formed a large part of the design. ‘You tend to spend most time at the hob and the sink, and it’s nice that when you’re stood cooking, you can look out at people, while having everything quickly and easily to hand,’ says Watkins.

Bifold doors open right back to give an uninterrupted view of the Oxfordshire countryside beyond.

Sink, bulthaup.

Know the pros and cons of a U-shaped kitchen
Generally, the pros of U-shaped kitchens include the fact that they are excellent for storage, offer lots of work surface and, having only one entrance, are very safe, because of a lack of through traffic. This last advantage, however, also means within small U-shaped layouts there will only be space for one user at a time.

It’s also worth noting they are typically more expensive than other layouts, such as galley or L-shaped designs, because more cabinetry and worktop is required for the additional run of units.

Plan your U-shaped layout
The cabinetry runs on a U-shaped kitchen can be roughly the same or vary in length; in both cases, there’s an opportunity for flexibility within the design. Where all walls are the same length (for example, 3m), your planning start point usually depends on where the windows are located.

If one of the walls has a window, this would usually be the run we’d suggest for your kitchen sink. Not only will a window offer natural light for washing-up, there’s also the romantic notion of gazing outwards while doing the dishes. This, of course, very much depends on your view.

Discover thousands of u-shaped kitchen designs to browse through.

Hide less-than-lovely features
U-shaped kitchens can also be designed so they ‘hide’ less attractive kitchen components and/or appliances behind taller units. For example, sinks, draining boards and microwaves (freestanding or otherwise) are not always a kitchen’s best features, but through foresight in planning they can be obscured from sight. This is particularly beneficial in an open-plan kitchen layout.

For example, in this kitchen, if you were seated at the dining table and facing the kitchen, the built-in microwave would be hidden from view by the protruding tall unit next to it.

Maximise an efficient work space
Whatever the size, a well-planned U-shaped kitchen design will ensure only a limited number of steps are required between different units and appliances. This makes the kitchen a much safer place during cooking, especially when other people are present.

In addition, generous worktop and storage capacity puts everything you need within easy reach, and provides all kitchenware with its own storage place. This means the kitchen can be effortlessly tidied after use, and it’s easy to maintain a clean and uncluttered look.

This is true even in really small U-shaped kitchens, such as this one, which is just 2620mm x 2040mm, including a 700mm gap between opposing runs. Space might be limited, yet there’s still a generous number of cupboards included within the design.

Incorporate corner storage
As mentioned, one of the great advantages of a U-shaped kitchen is that having three runs of cabinetry provides ample opportunity for storage. Having said that, the two corners in a typical U-shaped kitchen take up a significant amount of the available floor space.

So to achieve an ergonomically sound design, it’s important to select a specialist kitchen corner solution, such as a carousel or a LeMans corner unit (seen here, and so called because of its shape and curves, which are reminiscent of the famous Le Mans race track). These make use of the otherwise dead space within corner base units. Without these corner options, you would lose this space, or else the back of your cupboards would be extremely difficult to access.

Make room for an island
Typically, you need a much larger space if you want to include an island within this layout. As a rule of thumb, U-shapes with islands generally require a minimum of a 1m walkway on all sides between the cabinetry and the island’s worktop. As the units around the island are 650mm deep, and given that islands are normally between 1m and 1.2m deep, this means the room would need to be at least 4.3m wide. We tend to recommend a minimum width of 4.6m for this layout to allow optimum clearance around the island.

Comparatively, for an open-plan space, the depth would need to be a minimum of 2.6m. In this instance you would have one long back wall with two short wings forming the ‘U’ and the kitchen island in-between. Usually, one of the shorter wings would contain the tall housing, and the long back wall would house either the sink or hob, with the alternative on the island.

Depending on the location of windows, the shorter run of units on the other side often provides additional worktop space for small appliances, such as toasters, blenders and coffee machines.

Get expert advice on choosing the perfect island to fit your kitchen

Tailor your shape to your space
One of the key things to remember about U-shaped kitchens (apart from their generous worktop and storage space) is that there’s a lot of room for flexibility when designing them. From small to large spaces, or U-shapes with an island or peninsula, there are many variations and possibilities for what you can achieve with this layout. This means you can most likely design a U-shaped kitchen that’s right for you and right for the space you have available.

TELL US…
What do you like most about the U- shaped kitchen layout? Let us know or share your tips or photos in the Comments below.