What We Check on Your Kitchen Plan

42" minimum for one cook · 48" for two cooks

This is the floor you actually stand and work on. Too narrow, and an open dishwasher or oven door blocks the route past it, so passing behind someone who is cooking stops being comfortable. Kitchens where two people cook need more of it than kitchens where one does.

30" to combustible material/metal cabinets (24" with an approved hood/noncombustible protection); OTR microwave per manufacturer

The gap between the cooking surface and whatever sits above it, whether that is a cabinet, a hood, or metal cabinetry. Too little, and heat reaches material that was not built to take it. An approved range hood or other approved noncombustible installation is allowed to sit lower than an unprotected surface. An over-the-range microwave follows its own manufacturer clearance instead of this figure.

Every door and drawer needs somewhere to swing or slide. A hinge against a wall, a drawer front behind a handle, two doors meeting in a corner: each is fine on the drawing and a daily annoyance in the room.

Tall cabinets, crown molding and trim have to fit under the ceiling or soffit and beside windows and doors, and the drawing should show the heights that prove it.

15" one side, 12" the other

Clear counter beside the cooking surface, so a hot pan has somewhere to go the moment it comes off the heat. One side needs more than the other.

24" one side, 18" the other

Clear counter on both sides of the cleanup sink. Without it, washing, draining and drying all happen in the same few inches.

15" on the handle side, either side of a side-by-side, within 48" opposite, or above or adjacent to an undercounter unit

Somewhere to set things down beside the refrigerator while loading and unloading. Counter on the handle side does it; so does counter on either side of a side-by-side, a run directly opposite and close by, or counter above or beside an undercounter unit. What matters is that something is in reach of the open door.

15" at counter height (36") · 12" at bar height (42") · 18" at table height (30") · toward 21" for accessibility

Counter seating only works if there is room for knees underneath it. An overhang that looks generous in plan view can still leave nowhere to actually sit, and planning for accessibility asks for more of it.

Every appliance drawn on the plan, checked against the one you told us you own or are buying, widths above all.

32" behind a seat with no traffic · 36" to edge past · 44" to walk past

Space to pull a seat out and, where people pass behind it, to get by someone sitting down. A seating overhang that works in plan view can still leave the person behind it squeezing past.

Corner cabinets are reached through whatever sits next to them. Fillers, the small blank strips beside a cabinet, are what keep a door or drawer clear of the wall and the corner usable.

A cabinet end that will be seen, and the side of an appliance that will be seen, need a finished panel. If the plan does not say which ones, the order will not include them.

36" wide × 24" deep of continuous counter beside a sink

One continuous stretch of counter beside a sink for everyday food preparation, rather than a total added up across the room.

How the sink, cooking area, refrigerator, dishwasher and trash work together, so the everyday sequence of prepare, cook, clear and clean does not cross itself.

Whether the island's seating, storage and work surface suit what it is really for, and whether people can still move around it.

Whether the cabinet types and where the storage sits are practical for how the kitchen will be used, before the cabinets are ordered that way.