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Can’t decide which is the best kitchen layout between an L-shaped kitchen and a parallel kitchen for your home? Here’s a guide to help you out!
Whether you like it or not, kitchens are the first thing you must ever look into when buying a property or designing your home space. It’s where you spend your days cooking for your family and yourself. Your kitchen’s positioning, layout and even space will impact the way you live in your home drastically, hence it’s best suited to learn about different kitchen layouts before starting a kitchen design project. So, which one should you go for? A parallel kitchen or an L-shaped kitchen? No matter how often or rarely you use your kitchen, here are five things to consider before you begin designing your kitchen’s interiors.
How Often Would You Use Your Kitchen?
Any kitchen is designed considering how often or rarely you spend your time in it. Simply put, if you use your kitchen sparingly, you don’t need as many storage solutions and functionalities as compared to someone who may cook in the kitchen on a daily basis. If you cook every day, you can maximise your kitchen’s potential with the right kind of smart modular storage solutions for your kitchen.
The Size Of The Kitchen And If It Is Big Enough For Your Family
Depending on the size of your family, the functionalities in your kitchen may change. A well thought out kitchen includes all the essentials and strikes the right balance between aesthetics, storage solutions, functionalities and accessories — making your work in the kitchen easy-breezy.
Materials And Finishes That You Would Like To Incorporate In The Kitchen
Ensuring that your kitchen is built with materials and finishes that offer durability and longevity is imperative in the design process. Your kitchen will endure heat, moisture and varying temperatures at all times; hence choosing the right material will help you build a kitchen that’s easy to maintain.
Kitchen Style And Interior Design You’d Prefer
This goes as a personal preference, but your kitchen will not change its appearance often; hence discussing what style of kitchen you prefer with your partner or your family is important as well. While you may love the rustic industrial style, your family may want a traditional Indian kitchen or a minimalist kitchen style. Discuss these ideas beforehand.
Your Overall Kitchen Design Budget
If not planned the right way, your kitchen design project can quickly turn into a nightmare of expenses. Therefore, it’s essential to have a fair understanding of all the costs involved when planning your kitchen’s design to fit your budget and requirements. At DesignCafe, our modular kitchen designs are priced from 1.5 Lac onwards.
Now that you are equipped with the five thumb rules to kitchen designing, let’s dive into the main course, i.e., what’s a better kitchen layout for your home — an L-shaped kitchen or a parallel kitchen?
All You Need To Know About An L-Shaped Kitchen
An L-shaped kitchen is a perennial favourite amongst homeowners and is one of the most popular of all kitchen layouts in the Indian household. This layout is ideal for open spaces or homes that want to utilise their corners in the best way possible. These are the benefits of having an L-shaped kitchen at home:
– The L-shape perpendicular between the countertops helps reduce the walking time between each workstation and strikes a balance between the sink, stove and fridge effortlessly.
– This kitchen type works best for small to medium kitchen spaces. The triangular open space helps with easing into the kitchen space for preparation, cooking and even cleaning.
– An L-shaped kitchen comes with two rows of cabinet walls perpendicular to one another.
– This kitchen type follows the golden triangle rule very well, i.e. the preparation slab (sink), the storage unit (fridge) and the cooking range (sink) are installed within a gap of four-nine feet.
Tip: Segregate and bundle your kitchen essentials together for a free flow of workspace in your L-shaped kitchen. For instance, you can place your frequently used kitchen appliances closer to the refrigerator, making your golden triangle far more efficient and functional in use.
Additional Special Features You Can Add To Your L-Shaped Kitchen
Pull-Out Pantry: A smart way to stow away your non-perishables is by designing a pull-out pantry like the one shown in the image. Modern homes, unfortunately, lack a dedicated kitchen pantry space, hence a smart addition to your L-shaped kitchen is to bring in a pull-out pantry. If a pull-out pantry isn’t something that fancies your eye, you can also look into a swing larder for your L-shaped kitchen.
Tall Unit With Open Wine Rack: Acing the role of wardrobes in your kitchen, tall units are highly customizable and can easily fit the needs of your family. The tall unit shown in the image, not only comes with ample storage space and a built-in microwave, but it also offers access to your wine collection efficiently.
Magic Corner Unit: For someone that likes no tiny space wasted, a magic corner unit can do a fabulous job at making the most of your corner L-shape in the kitchen. The magic corner is a pull-out wire basket that is attached to the shutter, as seen in the image.
Also, check out Corner Kitchen Cabinet Ideas
Kitchen Island: An island can well accentuate your L-shaped kitchen whilst also adding extra storage space for storing your large pots and pans. Your kitchen island can also double as a breakfast counter or a dining space or simply be a coffee counter, depending on what you and your family needs the most.
Kitchen Storage Basket: Why have an extra storage container for your onions, tomatoes and potatoes and other fresh produce when you can have an in-built storage basket for your kitchen. These not only add to the extravagance of your kitchen but are functional in design as well. You can simply pull them out and store your fresh produce efficiently.
And with that, we come to an end of the L-shaped kitchen guide. But wait, we are here for a comparison of L-shaped vs parallel kitchens. So, let’s move to parallel kitchens now.
All You Need To Know About A Parallel Kitchen
A classic kitchen layout with a narrow space between two walls on either side, parallel kitchens come with two parallel countertops/workstations. They are ideal for small-sized homes or a small family with a single person using them. Alternatively, parallel kitchens are also called corridor-style kitchens, as this kitchen offers you an extra window/door to double up as your dry area and is also inside a room-like structure. Here are some benefits of having a parallel kitchen at home:
- A parallel kitchen is perfect for someone that loves their essentials within reach. You can simply build dado walls for storage or quickly access your overhead cabinets or base cabinets with ease.
- It allows you to have two segregated workstations, cooking and preparation areas, respectively. This makes it convenient for chefs that love to have order and cleanliness in their kitchens.
- They are compact and space-saving, allowing your home to have additional space elsewhere.
Tip: Make the most of the overhead space in your kitchen by designing smart storage cabinets to keep your parallel kitchen’s workstations clutter-free.
Special Features You Can Add To Your Parallel Kitchen
Appliance Garage: If you have the luxury of an open space in a parallel kitchen, you can add an appliance garage, i.e, a large tall unit that houses your mixers, blenders, induction plates and more. These appliances can easily be tucked away in a shutter unit, allowing your kitchen countertops to be clutter-free.
A Pantry Storage With Swing Larder: Using one of your walls to store your non-perishables is a great way to allow space in your kitchen area. To do so, you can design a tall pantry storage with a swing larder, as seen in the image. This allows you to keep your countertops free from clutter and keeps your non-perishables and kitchen essentials in a designated space.
Floating Shelf Below Overhead Cabinet: For someone that loves their spices, condiments and everyday ingredients at eye level, a floating shelf, as seen in the image, can be a fine addition to your parallel kitchen. Additionally, you can also hang your cutlery, spoons and other essentials with hooks below the floating shelf.
Now that you know how an L-shaped kitchen functions as compared to a parallel kitchen, why not connect with our expert designers at DesignCafe, to help you build the kitchen of your dreams.
And while you are at it, check out these blogs to get design inspiration for a parallel kitchen and L-shaped kitchen layout for your home:
- 8 L-shaped Kitchen Designs That You Can Feast Your Eyes On
- 20 Stunning Parallel Kitchen Designs To Look At
