I have a similar layout for my kitchen - the fridge is across from the peninsula with 40" of clearance. It is not an ideal location or where I would want it , but my small kitchen, with lots of doorways/windows, gives me no other good option. That could be why it ends up there in a lot of kitchens.

Many folks have a peninsula or island; they provide great workspace, storage, and eating space. Folks want their fridge to be accessible to the real cooking action, and that is invariably near a peninsula or island where the chef has the most free counterspace to work.

Folks with U-shaped or galley kitchens don't generally have this layout problem.

I'm not sure why you're asking this question -- are you in the middle of re-designing your kitchen? Can we help you figure out the best non-egress-blocking position for your own fridge?

People have different tolerances for space. What seems cramped to you (or me) is fine with someone else.

If we threw a party, I think we'd separate into two groups. One is the 36" is just fine as a minimum aisle, and think 42" is pretty much the max for a usable aisle. The other is 48" is fine as a minimum aisle, but try to have more. I am firmly in this camp.

Sometimes, I feel downtrodden by the extremely vocal narrow aisle advocates. They seem extremely righteous sometimes in their pursuit of a narrow world. I know the nkba is on my side but its cold comfort to know that a cabinet marketing organization agrees with me.

When I feel inadequate at waging my one woman war for adequate widths for everyone, I wrap myself in kitchen design books that agree with my viewpoint on soldier on.

There's two schools of thought when it comes to the fridge placement.

There are those that want the fridge within the prep zone and those that prefer it outside the prep zone. Both have their pros and cons and are (or should be) mediated by other factors.

Personally, I'm a strong advocate of the outside the prep zone school, especially if it's a multi cook kitchen or one where there will be family or guests milling about (or young children in the picture). Traffic flow should be kept out of a work area in efficient and effective design.

If it's a one cook kitchen or one where the fridge bridges work and designated seating areas, then inside or on the fringe of 'the zone' may be the best bet.

BTW, I think your question is a good one, but could have been presented without making an example of one of our members.

Interesting discussion. In my "before" kitchen, we have a peninsula that comes within 28 inches of our top-freezer refrigerator. That makes 36" sound like heaven! But even though it's a true pinch point and bottleneck, it doesn't block the way very often. From a day-to-day functionality standpoint, it's not the first or even second thing I would change about my kitchen if I could change only a few things to improve work flow.

From a buying-new-appliances standpoint, it is my #1 priority, because our fridge is very small and narrow...with 3 kids (one approaching his teen years) we need a big fridge.

In my current design, I have 45" between the fridge and peninsula, and it may be an FD fridge at that. Aaaah!

There are two very general reasons why refrigerators end up where they do in kitchens:

Since they are a large tall item they end up at the ends or corners of layouts to avoid placing bulk in the middle or breaking up runs of counter.

They are used regardless of whether anyone is cooking or not, so they are usually placed in an accessible area. Since this is toward the edges of the kitchen, often near an entry point, it may also be at a tighter point in the design.

I have been in kitchens where the wall oven stack was placed at this point (I guess the thinking is put something *not opened and closed a lot at a congestion point) and the refrigerator was put at another "edge" well within the kitchen itself. IMO that did not work well because one walked through the kitchen to get to the most used appliance.

My fridge is across from the peninsula and it's not a problem at all. I have 48" between, but I think I'd have it there with less room, especially now with the FD fridge. There's really no other place for it in my kitchen, but the bigger reason is convenience. It's easy for anyone to get into it without having to go "all the way" into the kitchen. I also find that I spend much more time at the counters, sink and cooktop then at the fridge when I'm preparing food, so it's location is not a problem.

The factors determining the location of our fridge were:

1. easy access to dining table (I find I'm moving stuff back and forth between the 2 more often than I'm moving stuff back and forth to the prep area.)
2. easy access to others but in a place that keeps them out of the work zone.
3. a place that doesn't block light from or line-of-sight to a window.

It ended up across from a peninsula in a fairly tight space, 42" from end of peninsula to the front of the fridge. It is at the entry of the kitchen and therefore creates a bit of a bottleneck when open. We put in a side by side to limit how far the doors would reach into the aisle. The peninsula makes a great landing zone nearby. After living with this for 4 years I would still make the same choice if I had it to do over again.

For some of us, we just have no choice. I live in a house that was built in 1894; it has an unbelievable number of doorways and windows in every room. Our kitchen, which I assume was where the original kitchen was in our house, was not tiny, but would have been quite tight as an eat-in kitchen. A lot of people in these old houses in my neighborhood use their dining room to eat in every day. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted my dining room to remain a formal space, plus it would then be very separate from the kitchen, through the butler's pantry and past a swinging door. Annoying and isolating.

Right next to our kitchen was a small room that had no real use. Can't imagine what its purpose was when it was built. We already have a number of small sitting rooms in our house, and didn't need another. So we took down the wall between the original kitchen and the sitting room to make an eating area, but that was the one solid wall in the entire room. It was challenging to say the least to design our kitchen, and there was really only one place to put a tall appliance like a fridge.

Same with narrow aisles. I would live it if my aisles were wider than they are. But I had to work with what I had. I could have given up the island, but the kitchen already had an island when we moved in, and I liked it, and didn't mind the narrow aisles. Sure, when we are having a big party, and I'm doing a lot of cooking, I'd love wider aisles. I don't think I've ever seen anyone say they PREFER narrow aisles, just that they are willing to live with them to have an island etc.

As noted by others, some of us simply have no choice (or rather, no cost-effective choice).

I just got back from spending a week at my in-laws' house. Their house was built over 50 years ago, and the recessed space for the fridge is precisely opposite the peninsula. They had the darned-est time finding a new side-by-side fridge that would precisely go into the recessed space. Hopefully, the current fridge will last another decade.

Now they *could* open up that recessed space by removing the built-in cabinets to the left of that space, and redoing that whole wall. But that's more of a cost, and opens up all of the issues of where they'd transfer all of the things that currently 'live' in the existing built-in. At this stage of their lives, they are not about to do that.

I don't know the exact dimensions of the aisle, but over the week's stay, whenever one person was heading 'in', another person could not come through in the opposite direction. Our little dances around each other did get old by the end of the week!

I did notice that when they had the counters done ten years ago, they kept the eating overhang on the edge that faces the fridge. It probably replicated what they had when the kids were growing up, but in retrospect, they could have ended the counter at the end of the peninsula and gained more space for the aisle.

FWIW.