Kitchen alley width

[ProDave]

6 minutes ago, torre said:

One possible approach would've been to tile through, not fix down the island and see how you live with it but I think that ship's sailed.

That is what we did with ours to arrive at the 1200mm gap.  Not on wheels but take all the drawers out and empty the cupboards, and 4 strong blokes could slide the whole thing as one unit.

[Spinny]

The fitter tells me it is not normally screwed to the floor at all, so potentially adjustable until the worktops go on, but not useable without worktops. Also difficult to visualise the aesthetic effect of adding the worktops on the surrounding spaces.

 

Outstanding fitter by the way, well practiced in tool feng shui. 

[Super_Paulie]

mine isnt attached to the floor at all. The only thing tethering it to its location is the ducting for the hob and a few cables. 

Edited Friday at 09:09 by Super_Paulie

[Spinny]

Thing really is what is workable for the dining table. 

i think the table has to be 900 wide, going narrower becomes cramped for xmas etc.

 

Anyone with a dining table adjacent to a wall care to comment on minimum space between the two ?

[G and J]

In the rental we're shortly to move out of we have our dining room table 650mm from wall......far to tight for comfort, feels "mean" and if you have 3 people down that side the middlee person can't get out behind those remaining seated.

[Spinny]

On 22/05/2026 at 16:33, G and J said:

feels "mean" and if you have 3 people down that side the middle person can't get out behind those remaining seated.

Well for the middle person to get out past others that are seated, then I imagine you would need at least 900mm.

 

In all honesty I have been to dinner at people's houses where you would need other(s) to move in order to get out. Ditto restaurants. The problem is (1) most uk houses are of limited size, so talking ideals is great if you are a multi-millionaire, live in the country, or somewhere where housing is cheap, but I rather think it very difficult to achieve for most people in the UK, and (2) the use case of people for dinner is occasional and rarely more than 6 or so people for us. Most of the time the table is serving no more than 4, so everyone can get out at 650. Is the use case of fat uncle albert sat in the middle needing the toilet that critical ? On the other side of the table is a walkway down the room, so permanently limiting that because fat uncle albert comes to dinner twice a year seems unjustified. The table can be moved to-and-fro of course but the lighting will be fixed.

 

Wall gap 900 + table 900 + seated person on other side 500 is 2300 which then leaves a walkway of only 600, or 900 with no-one seated.

 

Every trade robs space - the brickie stole 25mm, the plasterer 15mm, the kitchen fitter 15mm                  

[G and J]

On 22/05/2026 at 11:44, Spinny said:

Anyone with a dining table adjacent to a wall care to comment on minimum space between the two ?

Haven't had my coffee yet but you asked for comments. If you then go on to criticise those comments because what you wanted was another answer it dosn't encourage bothering to respond.

[dpmiller]

I'd pull the table out 6" or so, the wall is going to take a battering otherwise

[Spinny]

2 hours ago, G and J said:

Haven't had my coffee yet but you asked for comments.

Apologies @G and J, I do very much appreciate you providing the comment. 

I over reacted to the middle person getting out bit and I am frustrated that best laid plans get frustrated by all the trades nicking inches. The kitchen fitter has moved the island alleyway out to 910 saying he thinks that is best, the kitchen designer encouraged us to make the island 990 wide. I have been concerned about space on that side all long but everyone railroaded me.

 

Our old dining room was 3.4m wide with a 450mm sideboard on one side, leaving 2950 and we had a 950 table and high back sloping chairs.

 

We will have to chose the chair design very carefully - maybe fabric back.

 

Any pics appreciated.

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 08:25 by Spinny

[Tetrarch]

We had a completely free choice as left/right wasn't a consideration. We tried 1200mm and felt it was a little too large. In the end the aesthetic and practical choice was to align the worktop in order to have both corridors the same. In practice this has worked extremely well

 

As a comparison I attach the same picture as SuperPaulie's 1200mm example plus the plan view from which we made the decision 

Regards

Tet

 

[Spinny]

Looks like we are going to stick with 910 for the alleyway. We don't have the dishwasher problem as have gone for F&P dishdrawers.

 

Moving the table 700 from the wall on the other side is significantly better than 650.

Someone sat eating will need 450mm from the table - at 700mm total this leaves 250mm behind their chair - but if they do the usual temporary pull in of chair to let their neighbour out, then you get about 300mm behind the chair and most people can then slip out. In addition at 700mm you can stand against the edge of the table with the chair behind your legs and it is still clear of the wall. So this allows people to side step to the middle chair, cinema seat style and then sit down. Likewise they can get out this way if the person alongside pops out or swings their legs sideways.

 

So we get, 700mm from wall, 900mm table, 150mm chair fully in, leaving 1150mm passage alongside island with no-one eating.

With someone eating we get 300mm less alleyway or 850mm - still plenty of room to fetch and serve behind them.

For the odd dinner party we might temporarily move the table out to 750mm or even 800mm for fat uncle albert. It is Mr & Mrs Albert O'Nuts and their drunken son pissed-Archie-O-Nuts 🤣😬🤮

 

When people come and inevitably mill about chatting while the meal is cooking, we hope the 910mm alley will help keep them on the far side of the island rather than getting under the cooks feet on 'the wrong side'.

 

(PS We could I suppose knock it down and build a bigger extension, but I think I said that before when it was 2.2m wide.😉)

Edited 5 hours ago by Spinny