No the kitchen does not HAVE to be situated in any particular location and certainly not so that it has a view into the backyard. Think about how you want your kitchen to work and use that to guide your floorplan.

Getting groceries into the kitchen is usually a good reason for making the kitchen (or a large pantry) easily accessible from the garage.

If you have a formal dining room, you'll probably want it to be reasonably near the kitchen so that you're not carrying dishes over long distances. Do you want a family room or den nearby so that whoever is handling kitchen chores is still close to the "family action"? If so, you may want an "open plan" kitchen or one that is connected by a wide doorway to the family room or great room.

If you do lots of backyard barbeques then you might want your kitchen to open to the back yard. Likewise, if you have small children that you expect to be playing in the backyard and you want to keep an eye on them while you cook then you probably should try to locate the kitchen so there is at least a window to the backyard.

For me, over the past 20 years we've been living in a house with a very tiny kitchen...too small for more than one person to work in comfortably! But, it has a pass-thru over the sink into what was probably planned to be a breakfast room. About 10 or 12 years ago we turned the breakfast room space into our computer room and DH and I quickly developed the habit of talking over our days via that pass-thru while one of us cooked or did dishes and the other caught up on email or websurfed. I didn't want to lose that "talk time" so, when I was designing our new home, I made sure that the new kitchen and office are connected via the same kind of pass thru.

Our pass-thru and having the kitchen and office next to each other is probably not something very many other people would necessarily want but building a custom home is all about getting what works for you and your family!

Thanks for your response. We do have small children and our concern is that someone must have an eye on them while cooking

Your kitchen can be located where ever it works best for you and with whatever windows you need. You have to live in the house so build it to suit your needs and function for you, not someone else. Do you have the assistance of an architect to help you "place" the rooms where you want them? We designed our house and knew where we wanted the main room and how we wanted them to function. Then we brought our plan to an architect and he made all of it fit, yet serve our purpose at the same time. Someone just commented on my floor plan because I have my pantry and washroom at the front of the house. It had to be that way in order to accomodate our plan to have the great room open on to the back porch. So you see, it's all in how the house needs to function for you.

I said that having a view of small children who will be playing in the back yard is a good reason to put the kitchen where it can have a window to that yard. But if you and your architect can't figure out how to make that work, in this day of electronics there are other alternatives. Have you considered mounting a closed circuit camera where it will have a good view of your backyard and feeding the image to a screen in the kitchen? Might actually give the cook a better view of what is going on in the backyard than a window would!

Remember too that, like it or not, children VERY quickly outgrow playing in the backyard under Mom or Dad's close supervision. By the time you get moved into your new home, your kids may already have reached an age where they decide "the back yard is for babies" and pretty much refuse to play there. LOL! Talk to friends who have children a few years older than yours and find out how successful they are in keeping their kids in the backyard before you let that factor totally dictate your home design.

I agree-- baby monitors go a long way! We had a house with a kitchen in thr front of the house for years and even with four small children I loved that house-- it made no difference at all.

Umpety years of cooking while the sun glared into a SW-facing kitchen has made me very firm that the next kitchen will be on the north wall -- no other direction optional.

Baby monitors are a great solution to keeping track of the outdoor play. Because kids do grow up so fast and their needs differ from toddlerhood to teenage, it's more important to consider long-term and frequent usage of room and hall placement. In everyday use consider bringing in the groceries (no stairs, and close to pantry); doing the laundry (put the W/D close to source; have a folding area convenient); the mudroom should be convient to the outside door that will be used most; and do you want TV/computer games close to eating area or do you prefer to have that sort of noise away from conversation areas? If you often eat in a separate dining room, consider how you'll handle bringing in and removing dishes... halls and turning corners between kitchen and dining are neither comfortable nor efficient. Try to guess what it will be like living with grade schoolers and teen-agers (those toddlers will get there sooner than you think) so teensy bedrooms that don't have space for a desk aren't a good idea. Also consider that most of us live in an electronic age, so where are the computers going to be -- one for each child as well as for yourself. Look at how you actually live now, and try to build in comfort for that lifestyle.

Prior posters and Bevangel brought up good points, including that reminder that what is special and desired for one person may not suit another. It's your house, so design it for how you use it (or want to use it).