Tips for a Great Kitchen Your Client Will Love

As a freelance contractor, you want to design the best kitchens possible for your clients, not only to make your aesthetic mark but also to generate more business via word of mouth. Here are some tried and true ideas to improve both your design plans and schematics.

Use an Island

Professional kitchens can easily become cramped, uncomfortable spaces in which to work. By adding a utility island to the middle of your kitchen, you'll instantly improve the traffic flow and conserve space at the same time.

Position your oven and stove top near your refrigerator/freezer and washer. During the busiest hours, chefs, sous chefs, dishwashers, and other kitchen staff will need to move quickly among these three activity centers. If you space them too far apart, you'll not only slow down operations but also create traffic snarls which can lead to accidents. Even if you have lots of rooms to design and an open plan, professional chefs always appreciate a tight layout.

Optimize Storage

Kitchen workers need quick and easy access to cutlery, pans, cooking utensils, and ingredients. Some kitchen designers make the mistake of focusing too much attention on aesthetics, lighting, feng shui, and other "appliance-based" design concerns while overlooking the importance of easy access.

Ensure Appropriate Lighting Throughout the Kitchen

Overly bright fluorescent or overhead lighting can strain the eyesight of chefs and preparers and lead to lowered morale among staff. Conversely, if you don't have enough lighting -- or if your lighting is inappropriate, hard to change, or difficult to adjust -- you can similarly exhaust staff and pave the way for accidents. Install dimmers for overhead lights. Choose the appropriate lighting for the color scheme you use. An all-white or chrome-plated kitchen will tend to reflect light far more than a dark-toned kitchen will. To that end, you'd do well in general to choose a color scheme based on "neutral" hues. The lighting and color scheme of a kitchen can deeply influence the psychology of the staff who populate the space. A recent experiment in a Missouri prison demonstrates just how powerful the color/psychology connection can be: after the state repainted the walls of the prison cells pink, the inmates became significantly and permanently less violent -- all because of the change in color of their environment.

Design the Kitchen to be One of a Piece with the Rest of the Restaurant

Customers by and large will never visit the kitchen. Similarly, staff, preparers, and chefs likely won't spend much time in the dining area during business hours. However, when a restaurant's kitchen and the dining room function as a unified entity, the business tends to thrive. This doesn't mean that you need to choose a kitchen layout style or color scheme that mimics the front of the restaurant. However, your schematics should reflect the 'intention' of the restaurant. In some cases, you may wish to provide a 'portal' between kitchen and dining room. For instance, let's say you're designing a pizzeria. You might build in a window so that diners can see your pizza chefs tossing dough.

That said, if you do provide a 'point of view' to diners, be sure that the area they can view is well maintained. Also consider the layout of bathrooms and emergency exits when designing the flow between dining and kitchen spaces. It can be incredibly awkward -- and dangerous -- if these two spaces converge too easily. Many poorly designed restaurants locate their rest rooms in the back of their kitchens; customers are thus forced to walk through food preparation areas. This not only destroys the 'constructed mirage' of the dining room, but it also creates hazards for kitchen staff.

Include the Right Appliances -- in the Right Places

Don't mix and match brand appliances. If your dishwashers, ovens, refrigerators, stove tops, and the like are all covered under the same service package, your client will have a far easier time fixing problems if they do occur. Conversely, if every appliance has its own technical help number, warranty, and service package, your client may lose valuable time troubleshooting -- and such delays can be quite costly in the high-pressure restaurant business.

Look for big sinks that can accommodate lots of dishes. Install refrigerator/freezers that offer lots of space, so preparers need not worry about storage. Choose industrial strength dishwashers capable of handling at least 1.5 times the average load of the restaurant. Install state-of-the-art temperature controls, and ensure you have enough room to mount and adjust key appliances.

Keep Floor Levels Plumb

Gaps or warps in the floor of an industrial or commercial kitchen can lead to accidents, even lawsuits. Test and retest the leveling of your floor before you bring in expensive and heavy appliances. Otherwise, you'll likely have to jerry rig leveling solutions after the fact or pay contractors to remove appliances so that you can fix the structural problem.

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