If a consultation runs over its hour, it will be because of the kitchen. It is where the principles collide most often with what the builder settled years before anyone moved in.
Fire wants the south-east
The burner is the single most consequential thing in the room, and the south-east is where it belongs, with the cook facing east. Where the whole kitchen sits in the south-east, this is easy and the rest of the room falls into place around it.
Where the kitchen has been put in the north-east, which happens in a surprising number of flats, nothing about the room will be straightforward and the honest work is in ranking compromises rather than solving them.
Water wants to be somewhere else
The sink and the water storage want the north-east, which is to say the opposite corner from the burner. That is fine in a large kitchen and awkward in a galley, where the slab gives you a single straight run and the sink ends up a foot from the hob.
Where they must share a wall, the thing to avoid is having them directly adjacent. Even a small separation, with the storage or the working space between them, is worth arranging.
What a modular kitchen takes away
Fitted kitchens are sold on the promise that everything has its place, and the cost is that nothing can be moved afterwards. Once the slab is cast and the units are screwed to the wall, the burner is where it is going to stay.
This is the one room where I would ask to be consulted before the carpenter rather than after. An hour at the drawing stage is worth more here than a full consultation once it is installed.
Ranking the compromises
When the room cannot be right, the order I work in is: burner position first, then the direction the cook faces, then the separation of fire and water, then storage and weight. The further down the list you go, the more a compromise can be lived with.
A kitchen that gets the first two right and fudges the rest is a working kitchen. One that gets the first two wrong is where I would spend the budget.
Priya Swaroop Tripathi
Founder & Consultant
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