How much counter space you need beside the sink, the range and the refrigerator

What counts as a landing area, and what does not

A landing area is the stretch of counter beside an appliance where the thing that just came out of it goes down. The hot pan off the cooking surface. The tray out of the oven. The full kettle. The bag of shopping that gets set beside the refrigerator while somebody holds the door.

Published planning guidelines do not count every flat surface in a kitchen as a landing area. A counter qualifies only where it is at least 16 inches (406 mm) deep and sits between 28 and 45 inches (711 to 1143 mm) above the finished floor. A shallow shelf beside a wall oven does not qualify. Neither does a bar top raised above the band, however wide it is.

That definition is doing real work on a plan. A designer can show a room that looks generous and still fail the figures, because half the surface in it is either too shallow to set a roasting pan on or too high to slide one onto.

Published planning guideline. Every figure on this page is a published planning guideline. It is a recommendation from an industry body, not a code requirement, nobody inspects it and no building department enforces it. It is the figure a designer works to, which makes it the figure to measure a drawing against before the cabinets are ordered.

The published figure beside each appliance

Landing areas are published appliance by appliance, and the figures are not the same for each one. The sink gets the most counter. The cooking surface gets two different figures on its two sides. The refrigerator, the oven and the microwave each get one.

Read the refrigerator and oven rows carefully, because both contain an alternative that solves a lot of small kitchens. Neither figure has to sit beside the appliance. A run of counter directly opposite works, as long as it is no more than 48 inches (1219 mm) across from the front. That is a guideline written by people who have seen galley kitchens.

Two landing areas side by side do not add up

This is the rule that changes plans, and it is the one nobody has heard of.

Where two landing areas fall on the same stretch of counter, published planning guidelines do not ask for the sum of the two. They ask you to take the longer of the two requirements and add 12 inches (305 mm).

Work it on a real run. A sink needs 24 inches (610 mm) on its working side. A cooking surface four feet away needs 15 inches (381 mm) on the side facing the sink. Those two requirements land on the same piece of counter. Added together they would be 39 inches (991 mm). The guideline asks for the longer figure, 24 inches, plus 12 inches, which is 36 inches (914 mm).

The overlap rule is the reason a plan that looks impossible is often fine, and the reason a plan that added two figures together is carrying counter it did not need.

It cuts both ways, which is why it is worth knowing before the argument rather than during it. Ask which landing areas on your drawing overlap, and ask for the combined figure to be shown as one dimension rather than two.

The prep counter beside the sink is a separate figure

The 24 and 18 inch figures at the sink are landing areas. They are not the counter you chop on, and published planning guidelines ask for that separately.

The guidelines call for a section of continuous countertop at least 36 inches (914 mm) wide and 24 inches (610 mm) deep immediately next to a sink. Continuous is the word carrying the weight. A 36 inch stretch broken by a cooktop, a corner or a second sink is not a 36 inch prep area, it is two smaller ones.

There is one allowance for corners. Where the counter returns into an inside corner close to the sink, the guidelines let 3 inches (76 mm) of countertop frontage from the edge of the sink to the inside corner be counted. It is a small figure and it exists because sinks end up near corners more often than anybody plans for.

The dishwasher has two figures of its own

The dishwasher is not given a landing area. It is given a position and a standing space, and both are published figures.

• Published planning guidelines locate the nearest edge of the primary dishwasher within 36 inches (914 mm) of the nearest edge of a cleanup or prep sink.
• The same guidelines ask for at least 21 inches (533 mm) of standing space between the edge of the dishwasher and countertop frontage, appliances or cabinets.

The 21 inch figure is standing space, and it is measured from the edge of the dishwasher. It is not the depth of the door when the door is down, which is a manufacturer figure and a larger one. Both have to clear, and only one of the two is on the plan.

Manufacturer document. One manufacturer publishes 50-3/16 inches (1275 mm) of depth for one of its own 24 inch dishwashers with the door fully open, and asks for 2 inches (51 mm) between the side of that door and a wall or cabinet in a corner. That is that model, from its own published sheet. Your dishwasher has its own document and its own numbers.

Some households raise the dishwasher off the floor, and the planning guidelines note 6 to 12 inches (152 to 305 mm) as the range that has been planned for, quoting an accessibility standard. That standard was written for certain public and commercial buildings, it does not normally apply to a private home, and following it does not make a room accessible. Raising a dishwasher is a change to the cabinet and to the drain, so it is a decision for the cabinet order and a question for your plumber, not a change of mind during installation.

The whole kitchen, added up

Beyond the figure at each appliance, published planning guidelines give one number for the room as a whole. A total of 158 inches (4013 mm) of countertop frontage, 24 inches (610 mm) deep and with at least 15 inches (381 mm) of clearance above it, is what the guidelines say is needed to accommodate all uses.

It is a blunt instrument and it is useful exactly because it is blunt. Add up the counter on the drawing that is 24 inches deep with clear space above it. If the total is well short of 158 inches, the room is being asked to do something it does not have the surface for, and no arrangement of the same cabinets will fix it.

Two storage figures sit alongside it and are worth checking at the same time. The guidelines ask for the everyday storage to fall within 72 inches (1829 mm) of the center line of the main cleanup or prep sink, and they stop counting storage that sits more than 84 inches (2134 mm) above the floor toward the storage the kitchen needs. A plan with the plates in a tall cabinet across the room passes an elevation and fails both.

Where landing areas actually disappear on a plan

Landing areas are rarely designed out on purpose. They are lost in five or six recurring places, and all six are visible on a drawing if somebody looks for them.

• A refrigerator at the end of a run, against a wall, with the handle on the wall side. The counter is all on the far side, and the guideline figure is measured on the handle side.
• A cooking surface at the end of a run, where one of the two figures runs out into thin air and the pan handles stand over a walkway.
• A corner, where counter that looks continuous on a plan is actually two runs meeting, and the inside corner is not reachable frontage.
• A window sill lower than the counter, which stops a run short or hands it a sill it has to die into.
• A sink pushed toward a corner to make a window center, which takes the wider 24 inch side with it.
• A microwave moved late in the design, taking its 15 inch requirement to a wall that does not have 15 inches free.

Manufacturer document. Appliance documents can also decide where an appliance is allowed to go, independently of any guideline. One manufacturer asks for 1 inch (25 mm) beyond the edge of the trim on every side of one of its own built-in microwave trim kits, and says not to mount that kit within 2 ft (610 mm) of a range, a cooktop or another microwave. That is one kit, from one published document. The sheet for the model you are buying carries its own instructions.

What to ask for on the drawing

1. The landing area beside each appliance dimensioned on the plan, with the appliance named beside it.
2. The depth of each of those counters stated, so it is clear which ones are at least 16 inches (406 mm) deep and actually qualify.
3. Overlapping landing areas shown as one combined dimension, calculated as the longer requirement plus 12 inches (305 mm), not as two figures added together.
4. The continuous prep counter beside the sink dimensioned separately from the landing areas, at least 36 inches (914 mm) wide by 24 inches (610 mm) deep.
5. The distance from the dishwasher to the nearest edge of the sink, and the standing space in front of it.
6. The total counter frontage for the room, added up on the drawing, so it can be compared with the 158 inch figure.

All six are questions about a drawing, and all six cost nothing while the drawing is a file. A landing area that is 9 inches short is a cabinet run that has to change, and after the cabinet order it is a cabinet run that has to be paid for twice.