The Kitchen Design The Property Brothers Recommend For The Best Functioning Space

More than any other room in the house, a kitchen must be designed for efficiency. Aesthetics are important too, of course, but in order for a home cook to execute a meal in a timely manner, night after night, there is a well-established design rule to help guide layout choices and renovations. In a video posted to the HGTV site, the Property Brothers — otherwise known as Jonathan and Drew Scott — outline the kitchen triangle as one of the most important design rules that home renovators should follow. It's all about creating "easy access" to the most integral kitchen appliances, they say.

The concept of the working triangle in the context of kitchen design, which is also referred to as the "golden triangle," has been around for decades. The theory follows that the distance between the three most frequented locations in the kitchen — the sink, the fridge, and the stove — should be adequately spaced so they are neither too close, nor too far apart. When laying out the design of a kitchen on paper, a straight line drawn from one appliance to the next should form the shape of a triangle, with each side measuring between 4 and 9 feet and with nothing else (like a bulky island) in its path. This allows for the cook to easily move from one location to the next: grabbing ingredients from the fridge, rinsing and prepping by the sink, and then cooking at the stove. When things are too cramped, or if there's too much ground to cover, it interrupts the flow and can create a frustrating cooking environment.

Every good rule is made to be broken, of course. Some modern kitchen designers disagree that the work triangle should be the guiding principle for a space and consider it to be an outdated kitchen layout. The reality is that in many homes, there is no one singular cook anymore, with many families sharing the meal prep duties, or else designing kitchens that can serve multiple mini functions at once.

The alternative is to create a space with dedicated work zones to allow for multiple people to work within the space at the same time, like in a restaurant's kitchen. This means that perhaps for the person prepping ingredients, there are knives, cutting boards, and prep bowls, like the WHYSKO Meal Prep Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl (5-Piece Set), all within reach and close to the sink. In a household where people bake a lot, all the measuring cups and spoons would ideally be close to the baking pans, flour, sugar, and other necessary ingredients. The idea is to keep the workspaces localized so that everyone isn't darting around the kitchen and bumping into each other.