How IKD’s designers avoid common IKEA design safety errors – part 1

Our design team shares solutions for correcting issues before they start!

As an IKEA customer you’re choosing IKEA cabinetry to bring your kitchen design idea to life in an affordable, stylish way. Right?

But having a poor design filled with common kitchen design mistakes can be costly in more ways than one.

That’s why we here at IKD would like to provide you with a two-part series explaining some of the most common kitchen design mistakes to avoid potential hazards – and headaches – in your IKEA kitchen.

And, we’d like to try and save you a few bucks along the way as well!

After all, it’s “better to be safe than sorry,” and nowhere is this more important than with your kitchen design.

So, let’s take a look at some of the most common kitchen design mistakes – and how our designers help you to avoid them in your IKEA kitchen.

Tall cabinet next to range

You’ve saved some examples of kitchen designs and one of them features an IKEA tall cabinet directly to the left of the range.

You may love the look, but it’s a very serious design no-no, and frankly, a design error that a professional would never make.

Allow me to explain.

Located there, that tall IKEA cabinetry is going to be a magnet for splatters and smudges.

Something’s bound to jump out of the frying pan, and the worst part is that it’s not necessarily something you’re going to notice right away. Something like oil may not be noticed until after it’s dried up and hard to get the stain out of the cabinet.

Not good.

Equally ill-advised is putting the cabinetry so close to a heat source.

Aside from the obvious fire hazard, putting the side of the tower right next to a source of high heat will significantly reduce the life of the cabinet. Over time, it will damage the melamine and veneers – causing peeling – and the walls of the IKEA tall cabinet will become weakened.

Lastly, it simply creates unsafe – and uncomfortable – cooking.

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How so?

Well, it’s necessary to have the area on the sides of the range with a proper work triangle.

You wouldn’t want to struggle to move boiling pots around and have your arms directly over them because of the tall tower. Plus it’s a necessity to have a countertop surface on both sides of the range for prep and a work space.

Our solution for this IKEA kitchen design?

Either eliminate the tall tower and design a base and wall cabinet instead or, decrease the width of the base cabinet to the right of the range and place a new base cabinet to the left of the range with that same width.

Cooktop beneath window

On occasion customers request a design with the range or cooktop beneath the window, as opposed to the more typical design with the sink placed there.

There are several reasons why this is a bad idea.

For starters, an open window above the range invites breezes that distort the flame and disperses its heat – making it inefficient.

This results in a higher consumption of electricity or gas. Not eco-friendly and leaves you with a larger bill!

This also leaves no room for a ventilation hood, which means that cooking odors linger on for a while.

Also, much like the tall cabinet tower, sauce and oil splatters will constantly dirty the window.

And also like the tall cabinet tower, this too is a fire hazard. Just think of a draft blowing the curtain near the flame and catching on fire.

Here is a safer, cleaner and more practical design solution where you can enjoy your space – and still enjoy the view!

Leaving no space for hood

You may be tempted to use every last inch of available space for your IKEA kitchen project, but be smart. There are certain areas that need extra space; the hood is one of them – especially in relationship to your IKEA wall cabinets.

For starters, you don’t want it too crowded. It’s better to have fewer, well-distributed cabinets than more – poorly designed – giving a crowded look.

Also, proper cleaning above and around the range hood becomes more difficult because there’s practically no room for a sponge along the sides.

And once again, is the heat issue. You would not want to place your new IKEA VOXTORP cabinets nearly above the burners and the heat coming from the pots.

The best thing to do is give the range hood its space and prevent the cooking heat from ruining the cabinets. The required minimum is 3” clearance on each side of the hood.

Glass cabinetry near range

If you don’t want the hood too close to the cabinetry, you definitely don’t want glass cabinets near the range.

So, if you’re looking for kitchen design services to put glass door cabinets around the range, please reconsider.

There’s reasons, as design professionals, we say this.

For example, glass doors are exposed to constant heat around the stove. This weakens the door frame and glass over time and could cause the glass to shatter.

Also, glass doors around the stove get much dirtier than others; they’ll constantly be dirty or smudged and will be a continuous source of frustration for you. Plus there’s no need to be constantly cleaning the glass around a heat source if it can be avoided.

From a practical standpoint, glass doors usually show off the decorative pieces behind them. They’re not needed near the stove. It’s best to have the day-to-day cooking items behind a solid door since they tend to be items that are best hidden.

So please don’t design glass doors near the stove.

There are always safer and cleaner design options to any kitchen design idea.