With more open-plan kitchens, and rooms with lots of windows and no space for wall cabinets, providing adequate storage for a client today requires a new approach to planning. The NKBA book “Kitchen Planning” presents a revised system for determining storage, which is excerpted here.

Base, wall, drawer and pantry storage are still the main elements of a storage system in the kitchen. Storage recommendations are based on shelf/drawer frontage, not just cabinet size. Different amounts of shelf/drawer frontage are recommended for small, medium and large kitchens:

• 1,400 inches for a small kitchen (less than 150 square feet);
  
• 1,700 inches for a medium kitchen (151 to 350 square feet); and
  
• 2,000 inches for a large kitchen (greater than 350 square feet).

The NKBA recommends using the guidelines in the chart below as a means to calculate the location of storage:

Miscellaneous storage is storage more than 84 inches above the floor. It is also furniture pieces, pot racks, etc.

The chart recommends the allocation for different types of storage in each size kitchen. However, these specific recommendations do not have to be met as long as the appropriate total shelf/drawer storage is met for kitchen size. For example, it is not necessary for a small kitchen to have 180 inches of pantry storage. The kitchen may have no pantry storage and instead have more base, wall and drawer storage than indicated on the chart. The guidelines do indicate that only the amount specified as miscellaneous storage can count toward the totals. Since this is pretty inconvenient storage, it would not be a good idea to substitute lots of storage above 84 inches for base storage.

Calculations

Cabinets have various shelf and drawer configurations that affect the amount of shelf/drawer frontage the cabinet offers. For example, a wall cabinet with three shelves offers more storage area than a two-shelf cabinet. A base cabinet with two 24-inch shelves holds more than one with one 24-inch shelf and one 12-inch shelf. Use the following formula to calculate the amount of shelf/drawer storage provided per cabinet:

Cabinet size X number of shelf/drawers X cabinet depth in feet =Total Shelf/Drawer Frontage
Cabinet size: Standard cabinet width dimensions are usually given in 3-inch increments, i.e., 12, 15, 18 inches.

Number of shelf/drawers: Each cabinet will have a number of shelves and/or drawers specified. Check the cabinet catalog.