The kitchen triangle: outdated or updated?

The kitchen triangle has long been the norm in kitchen design. It’s made up of the three points most used when prepping, cooking, and cleaning up and storing afterward — the sink, the refrigerator/freezer and the cooking surface.

“Those being the most useful, we want to make sure those are within a specific proximity to each other,” says Kelly Trotz, UDCP, a Universal Design Certified Professional senior designer at Lifestyle Design LLC, in Geneva. “We could have different types of triangles for different shapes of kitchens — an isosceles triangle, or a right triangle — but the idea is that any one leg of that triangle shouldn’t be too close to another item. We wouldn’t want our refrigerator or sink to be closer than 4 feet or further away than 9 feet, so we want to stay within those parameters when working in the triangle.”

Lifestyle changes over the years have led to the question of whether the triangle has become outdated. “I don’t feel it’s outdated yet, but I do feel as though it is evolving,” says Trotz, who serves on the board for the Chicago chapter of NKBA, the National Kitchen and Bath Association. “I’m seeing a lot of changes in those appliances very rapidly, so as we see technology advance in other sectors, it is also advancing in our home appliances and our use of those appliances, as well. We’re seeing smaller appliances come into play, such as air fryers, and we’re also seeing those being incorporated into the large appliances to consolidate things. We’re in a very interesting time period, innovating things very quickly, and we’re also trying to combine things really quickly.”

One example is the prep sink, notes Trotz, which has added another washing surface for food prep or as a secondary sink for cleaning. Trotz also has clients with multiple refrigerator/freezer combinations in their kitchens that are not necessarily side-by-side. “I have a client that did a full 36” refrigerator/freezer — one for the adults and one for the kids, at opposite ends of the kitchen,” says Trotz, highlighting today’s family lifestyles dictating the need for sports drinks and snacks for active kids. “That kind of disrupts the idea of the work triangle, too,” notes Trotz.

Innovations in cooking surfaces are also rapidly changing. Enter the advent of induction, which uses magnets to heat a surface with friction. “The interesting thing with that is that it really opens up what it means to have a cooking surface,” says Trotz. “Typically, induction cooktops or ranges have a glass surface which cools as soon as it’s turned off, which means that we could also use them as porcelain countertops so we can have different areas as cooking surfaces and not have it look like it, which is very exciting.”

With this evolution Trozt predicts more points, morphing the kitchen triangle into a square, or an even larger polygon. “It all depends on how the user uses those points,” she says.

By contrast, while growing families are adding points to their triangle, empty nesters may not be using their kitchen quite as much. “There’s this bell curve, depending on where people are at their stage of life as to what works best for them,” says Trotz. “It depends on the person.”