If you’ve read our blog about the working triangle, you’ll know all about the importance of a well-designed kitchen, (and if not you can read it here). Zoning is similar to the concept of the working triangle but it allows for a more personal approach. If you’re not using zones in your kitchen, you may not be using your kitchen to its full potential.
There are endless versions of different zones, so it’s best to start out with the five basics:
- Preparation – A zone dedicated to the preparation of meals. It’s usually located adjacent to or opposite to the cooking zone. This is key because if you’re carrying food across to the cooking area, it’s sensible to keep this motion as easy and obstacle-free as possible in order to avoid dropping or spilling anything.
- Cooking – This is the area that contains your oven, hob and possibly your microwave. Plus, bench space to place hot dishes and plate up meals.
- Cleaning – A zone that should contain your dishwasher and sink as well as any cleaning products. Keeping related items near each other is highly recommended, largely because you don’t want to be wandering from one end of the kitchen to the other, searching for the right cloth for your cleaning spray.
- Consumables – This is a zone for the food, whether it’s fresh, refrigerated, frozen or dry goods. If you keep some foods in separate spaces, such as your oils and spices across the room from your fridge or freezer, this is called a ‘split zone’.
- Non-consumables – This is the zone that contains cutlery, glasses, silverware, and small appliances.
A huge benefit of using zones is the personal approach it allows. By breaking down the activities you do in the kitchen (as an individual and as a household), and then allocating areas you create a storage system that works for you and your kitchen. Zones also help to encourage users to keep the space neat as it streamlines their experience within it.
If having a zone for entertaining is important to you, kitchen islands or L-shaped worktop units with breakfast bars are the perfect solution for medium to large kitchens. It’s normal for zones to overlap, especially in smaller kitchens in which case there may be prep areas on either side of your cooking area (such as an oven). Houzz Magazine has a great diagram to help you visualise the different zones and how they can work together.
Top tip: store your dishes close to your sink/dishwasher, it’ll make putting your dishes away a lot more bearable!
In addition to this, it’s advised to keep your most-used items such as pots and pans at a medium, easily reachable height, and your lesser-used items at a higher or lower area, to keep your surfaces from becoming cluttered.
At Marble Supreme, we value kitchens that are as beautiful as they are functional. If you’d like any advice or any more information, call us today to speak to one of our experts.