Understanding the Work Triangle

The work triangle consists of the three major use areas in a kitchen - sink, refrigerator, and range. The rule is that these three items should form a triangle, without interruption, and with legs of the triangle being no more than nine feet and no less than four feet. But what is it REALLY and why is it so important (or maybe not so important) to heed this long-holding guide?

We are rule-followers at Waldron Designs… except when we aren’t! For the most part, we love the triangle guideline, but see it as that, a guideline not a hard-and-fast rule. Our goal in designing a kitchen space is to ensure that the layout meets the owner’s cooking, preparation, and cleaning styles, and sometimes this means breaking the rules.

Rather than working on a design that meets the letter of the work triangle rules, we tend to develop the design and then go back and analyze it using the triangle as a discussion point with our clients. More often than not, our designs typically fall into the work triangle rules with a natural understanding of how a kitchen space needs to work functionally using kitchen “zones”, based on the users’ needs.

In a project in the Madison Park neighborhood of Seattle we are currently working on, the kitchen was laid out to meet the client’s needs and was one of the rare instances where the work triangle rule was broken:

Two parts of this rule broken in this layout. First, the triangle is interrupted by the island corner. That said, the rule does allow the corner of an island to overlap circulation by up to twelve inches. Second, and most importantly, the longest leg of the triangle is 13’. We could certainly move the sink to the island, but this takes the desirable view of the garden from the dishwashing area. We could move the cooktop to the island, but with extremely tall ceilings and a lovely open plan, the addition of a hood would create an unnecessary interruption that feels misplaced.

To mitigate some of these issues, we put a prep sink in the island, allowing prep work by the range and refrigerator while maintaining a cleaning station with access to views and natural daylight.

The work triangle is not perfect. It assumes that we only have three major working areas and that there is only one cook in the kitchen. What about someone who is an avid cook as well as a baker with a proofing oven? What if we use a smaller refrigerator for primary cooking/baking storage, but supplement with refrigerator drawers to create access to family snacks outside the main work area? 

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