Draw the kitchen at its true size, set the run, the island, the sink and the fridge exactly where you want them, and read the gap between them before you order a single cabinet.
How it works
A kitchen is the one layout where being ten centimeters out is expensive. Counters, appliances and walkways here carry their real dimensions, so the gap between the island and the run is a number long before it is a mistake.
Type the wall lengths, mark the window, and put the door where it opens from. If the kitchen is part of an open space, draw the whole space and let the kitchen occupy its corner of it.
Counter runs, an island, a sink and a fridge, all at working depth. Slide the island until the passage on both sides reads the way you want it, and the plan updates as you move.
Step inside and take the path you would take cooking. Fridge to sink to hob, then back with a hot pan. A layout that survives that walk on screen tends to survive it in real life.
Pick a look, from painted shaker to flat slab and stone, and the exact view you are standing in comes back as a photorealistic kitchen, cabinets and counters included.
Not every kitchen is a rectangle
Grab the middle of a wall and pull it into a bay, or run the counter around a corner that was never square. The area recalculates as the wall bends.
The kitchen checklist
None of these are style questions. They are the ones that decide whether the finished kitchen is pleasant to stand in.
Stand in it first
From above, every kitchen looks generous. At eye height you notice the wall unit you would hit your head on, the oven door that opens into the walkway, and the window the tall cupboard was about to cover.
Walk your kitchen layout
A kitchen layout lives or dies on the space between things. A galley passage under a meter feels tight the moment two people are in it and an oven door is down. An island with a beautiful worktop is a poor island if the run behind it leaves you turning sideways.
Drawing at true scale turns those arguments into readings. Move the island ten centimeters and watch the passage figure change. It is a far more useful conversation than deciding by eye and finding out after the cabinets are in.
Cabinet fronts are the fun part and the last part. What decides how the kitchen works is where the sink goes, whether the fridge opens into the walkway, and how far a hot pan travels from the hob to a surface it can be set down on.
Settle those first with the layout in front of you, then choose the finish. A shaker front and a flat slab front sit on the same carcasses, so the style decision can wait until the geometry is right.
A dimensioned plan convinces a fitter. It rarely convinces the person you live with. Rendering the exact view you drew gives you a photorealistic kitchen to react to, in the light it would actually have.
That render is made from your plan, not from a catalogue photo. The window is in your window's place, the island is your island's size, and the counter runs the length you typed.
Your first kitchen layout takes about two minutes, right on your phone.
Plan my kitchen