This seems to be a personal preference thing. I'd try to mock up the island with tables or boxes or whatever you can find, and move around the space with your husband to see what works for you. Some people have 3' and are fine with it, love it even. Right now I've got 4', and it isn't enough. Play around with it in your kitchen, and see how you feel.

Our island is 4 feet wide by 5 feet long. We have 39 inches between the sides of the island and the perimeter cabinets in our U-shaped layout:

My husband doesn't cook, so this amount of space is fine for us. It's cosy but workable. I think 5 feet would seem like an ocean, but raenjapan offers good advice about doing a mockup.

We do well with 4' for two cooks. YMMV

I like 4 feet, too. Further apart than that, and it will be very inconvenient to transfer ingredients from the island to the range, and stuff stored on one side won't be handy to someone working at the other.

We've only been in the house a month, but have had multiple cooks working in that space comfortably.

We put 5 feet between our island and the line of base cabinets and it works perfectly. We are 2 very active cooks in the kitchen and were always bumping butts trying to get dinner ready or getting coffee in the morning.

The 5 feet allows two people to be back to back and move lengthwise from work space to work space. I highly recommend it if you have the room. We converted half of our house to a great room, and so it wasn't an issue. The kitchen went from 10 x 8 to 22 x 10.

Just remember it's all about proportion, as well. 4 feet is pretty standard, and works fine if you can't push out too much.

**excuse the hijack** madyl - is that actual brick for your backsplash or is it a dark subway tile? Either way it's gorgeous!!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread...

I would do at least 5 feet if the cabinet wall has the refrigerator on it and the counter has seating in that area. Otherwise, 48" works fine for us (DH is a big man, and I am small). We only had space for 50" between the refrig. wall and the island counter. It is too narrow if someone sits at that counter, but fine if no one uses that stool. The year DD1 was pregnant during the holidays was a bit cozy. :

Hi Tanya,

We have 3.5 feet between the cabinets and island and this is MORE than sufficient when both of us are cooking. Any wider and it would be TOO large a distance and too inconvenient for using that island as my prep space.

Even with the range door and refrigerator open, there is sufficient space.

As Raenjapan suggested, perhaps you can do a mock up on trace paper with the dimensions and lay it down on your kitchen floor to get a better feel for moving around the space.

I am so very grateful for your sharing your experiences!

We did the mock up, but I just cannot visualize using it as I've never had an island before and I don't have frame of reference here : )

We also have the same layout as brunosonio - kitchen (22x9.5) opening up to the family room (22x25) ...

Would appreciate more input with pros and cons!

Tanya

Five feet would be WAY too wide for me. In fact, four feet would be too wide for me. As mentioned, this is definitely a personal preference thing. After a last-minute panic, I ended up with a 43" distance, and I wish it were about 3-4" less. I think 39" would be my ideal.

We often have two cooks in the kitchen, but with our layout, we are seldom back-to-back. Even when we are, 43" inches is more than enough to give us room to work without bumping. I like to prep at the island and then pivot to add things to pots on the stove. With five feet between the island and stove, it would feel like a hiking trip.

So, things to consider include your style of cooking (will you want to be chopping at the island and then turning to add things on the stove?), the scale of your kitchen (aisles of exactly the same width can be perceived differently in a small, medium, or large kitchen), and the size of the people using the kitchen (wider frames may require a bit more room to maneuver). I am sure there are other issues, but these are the ones that led me to want a narrower aisle. I chop and turn to the stove frequently, my kitchen is not huge, and we are not particularly wide people, so narrower makes more sense for us.

Keyword--layout. I'm also trying to plan for my aisle space and having some of the the same thoughts.

As noted, it depends on what work zones are involved and things like frig doors, or standing at the stove, or loading the DW. Not the same if just trying to have some room to move back and forth at the counter. I've been in many kitchens in which all seems well unless you are actually using the appliances! Plus, getting things out of upper cabinets is different from lower, etc.

Also as you can tell from the responses, it depends on personal preferences, such as whether it really annoys you to "bump butts" and jockey a bit, or whether you're cozy together and prefer to free up other floor space.

So, the layout will show you whether you've got the work areas zig-zagged a bit (not directly opposite each other) or whether the most frequently accessed cabinet is right behind the spot where you will usuallly chop vegetables--or whatever--so guaranteed to bump butts in the smaller aisle choices.

I have 4' or a smidge over on the working sides of the island, but more on the seating and walking side. I'd say 4' is enough for 2 cooks. I wouldn't go wider unless you have a fridge opposite a dishwasher or sink (or something like that).

Caview...it helped us to mock it out on the open floor. Once we had demolished everything and the space was opened up and the floor swept and clean, I used blue masking tape to mark out where the base cabinets were along the wall, then the island.

In our case, the island helps to define the kitchen from the rest of the great room. So our island is quite large, approx 8 feet long and 3.5 feet wide. It includes an eating bar which holds 4 bar stools and a prep sink.

The island functions as the main food prep area, and we created 2 work triangle areas centered off of it. One goes from island to fridge to double ovens/pantry, and the other goes from island to main sink to rangetop.

If you email me privately, I can send you some pics from the construction...I can't remember how to post from my photobucket account to here.

5 feet works for us, because the other side of the island is the huge space of the family room and living rooms, and it all balances out.

caview, will you and your hubby be standing back to back....like one working at the sink and another directly behind prepping at the island?

i am a one cook kitchen and it would be too much for me. i like to do some prep at the island and turn directly to the sink behind me (we also don't have a prep sink in the island so that may be a factor also). we only have 3 ft. between sink and island. on the island side with seating, we have 44 inches. i find it to be plenty for us, even when we entertain. if we had more space, my kd would have liked both aisles to be bigger.

we also used the blue masking tape idea.....

now i am just rambling, but just really think about how you will be using your kitchen space. i don't think there is a wrong answer (especially since you have plenty of space).....rather what would work for your cooking style.

I struggled with the same decision when we added a kitchen island in the house we recently sold. We did a simple mock-up with sheets draped over chair backs.
I found that on the working side of the island 4' worked best for me and allowed ample space for another cook too. A wider aisle would have required too many steps when transferring pots, etc. from the counter to the island. With multiple cooks over holidays, more space might have been nice but would not have been worth the everyday inconvenience for me.
The counter side of the island had 4 1/2 feet. That side really needed 5'.
OTOH, I'm only a tad over 5'. That might make a difference too!

We have a 5 foot aisle in the work area and it's great. We don't bump butts or hafta tell the other person to get out of the way while opening a cabinet. We can have both sides open and still fit. We have stools that back up to operating cabinets and have more than 5 but it could have been 5 feet or a bit less with no problems.

After the nkba standards, it's pretty much personal. The recommended NKBA MINIMUM working aisle is 48" in a kitchen with two cooks and 42" with one. That would govern between base cabinets attached to a wall and cabinets on another wall or an island. The space is generally measured from counter edge to counter edge. Other strange guidelines apply in other situations.

Another option for a slightly wider than "normal" space is to add to the counter depths by padding out the base cabinets from the wall so the counter can be deeper. It works best if there is also an option to get deeper wall cabinets.

Our kitchen is 26' x 17', and our island is 8' x 5'. We have 4' between the island and perimeter cabinets. It works very well for us.
It is wide enough to pass another person comfortably, but close enough to reach both sides easily- ie. when emptying the DW, reaching for ingredients, searching in a drawer behind you when stirring something on the stove!

We have more space on the other side of the island for stools.

My distance it to me too wide, I'll have to measure it but I wish my island was closer to the back cabinets in my U shaped kitchen. The space between is only for walking, and standing in front of stove to cook, no frige or anything in that space to worry about, so to me I would want my island closer to cabinets to give my attached living room that extra 8-12" atleast of space!

caview, you said "...have the same layout as brunosonio - kitchen (22x9.5) opening up to the family room (22x25) ..." but I don't remember seeing this layout and I doubt I'd find the right thread from brunosonio.....

I did try a search. In the Gallery section and in this forum.

Tanya please copy the URL and post it here.

-david

I think the answer is dictated by layout to a certain extent. I would not do an aisle width smaller than 39" (countertop to countertop not cabinet face to cabinet face). 4' is a good amount of space for aisle width if there is no seating. If you have a range on a backwall and then a sink in the island at the same spot then aisle width is more important at that spot.

Good luck!

If your dishwasher will open into this space, then be sure there is enough room to walk around if its open.

caview - It definitely depends on what is going on in the space between island & cabinets.

We got to tweak our spacing during the construction since the island was floating until the counters arrived (and then the finished plumbing, etc). We planned for about 4'4" (counter to counter) but then pulled it much tighter (3'4") along just the back cooktop wall of our u-shaped kitchen. This way when using the island as the prep table & prep sink you just turn right around to the cooktop rather than walk over there. My hubby who used to cook in a restaurant regrets that we didn't go even tighter between the cooktop & island.

That would be way too much for me. I prefer things more within easy reach and the cozier feeling of things a bit closer together rather than wide open spaces - even with two or more people working in the kitchen. I think it depends on a lot of things including what will be opening into the space and how many and how big the people are that will frequently be in the space. Best advice in my opinion is to mock it up if you haven't worked in a similar space in past that you can judge by.

This pic shows the U-shaped layout of my kitchen, with the island (see fridge handle on left side). The room is 15' wide & the 4'x4' island is supposed to be centered, but... There is approx. 41" between range & island; 55" between fridge & island; and 44" between sink & island. The 4th "wall" is a free-standing chimney with fireplaces on 3 sides. It has a raised hearth. There is about 52" between the island and the base of the hearth, and maybe 70" from island top to the chimney wall.

My KD feels that 42 inches is a minimum, but that some people prefer 48 inches if there are frequently two cooks in the same space. He says that 48 inches is an extra step away that some people don't like. Basically comes down to preference. In my case, since I have a dishwasher and possibly an oven range opening into the aisle I am considering the 48 inches. Another reason is because I have a generous amount of space between the island and the back wall of the kitchen and I think it may balance the room out a bit more to have the island the extra six inches over. If everything were equal, I'd probably prefer 42 inches, though.