Galley Kitchen Ideas: Start at 1,200mm Between the Runs

A galley kitchen is the most efficient layout there is and the easiest one to get wrong, and the difference between the two comes down to a single measurement: the clear gap between the two runs. Get 1,200mm and the room works. Get 950mm and you have built a corridor where two people cannot pass and a dishwasher door blocks the route to the fridge. Every idea below sits downstream of that number, so it is worth doing the arithmetic before you look at a single door style.

This page gives you the British unit dimensions, the room widths they imply, the ventilation rules that apply when you move a hob, and the layout decisions that make a long narrow kitchen feel like a room rather than a passage.

The arithmetic, first

British kitchen units are standardised, which means you can plan a galley on paper to the millimetre.

From that, the room widths fall out:

• Units on both sides: 600 + 1,200 + 600 = 2,400mm of clear wall-to-wall width. That is the true minimum for a two-run galley with full-depth units.
• Units on one side only: 600 + 1,200 = 1,800mm. Below 1,800mm you cannot use standard 600mm units against one wall and still walk past comfortably.
• Comfortable for two cooks: 600 + 1,500 + 600 = 2,700mm. At 1,500mm two people pass each other without anyone turning sideways.

Why 1,200mm and not 1,000mm? Because appliance doors are the constraint, not bodies. A dishwasher, an oven and most base unit doors swing out around 600mm. At 1,200mm you can have one door open and still get past. At 1,000mm you cannot, and you discover this every single time you unload the dishwasher.

If your room is narrower than 2,400mm

Plenty of Victorian rear extensions and flat kitchens are 2,100mm or 2,200mm wide. You have four workable moves, in order of how much they cost.

Use 500mm deep base units on one run. Several suppliers make reduced-depth carcasses. You lose 100mm of worktop on that side and gain 100mm of gangway, which is often the difference between awkward and fine. Sink and hob go on the full-depth run.

Go single-run. Everything on one wall, nothing opposite except a slim tall unit, shelving or nothing at all. This is not a compromise in a 1,800mm to 2,200mm room; it is the correct answer. A run of 3.6m on one wall holds a sink, dishwasher, hob, oven and fridge with the clearances above intact.

Drop the wall units on one side. Open shelving at 300mm, or nothing, changes how a narrow room reads even though it does not change the floor gangway. Visual width matters more than people expect in a room you walk through.

Push one run into an alcove. Chimney breast recesses in terraces are frequently 400mm to 600mm deep and can absorb a tall unit or a fridge without eating gangway.

Where things go, and why the triangle does not apply

The classic work triangle assumes you can stand in the middle and pivot. In a galley you cannot, so use a line instead.

Put the sink, the main prep worktop and the hob on the same run, in that order, with the 800mm and 300mm clearances above. That means the wet-to-hot sequence happens along one wall and you never cross the gangway carrying a pan of boiling water.

Put the fridge, tall storage and the oven on the opposite run. These are fetch-and-return jobs, not continuous work, so crossing for them is fine.

Never put the hob directly opposite the fridge or a tall unit door. Someone opening that door while you have a pan on is the single most common galley near-miss.

If the kitchen has a through route, keep the busiest part of the work sequence away from the doorway end. A galley that people walk through is workable; a galley where people walk through the hob-to-sink zone is not.

The dead end is the design problem

Most galleys have one closed end, and that end decides whether the room feels like a kitchen or a corridor. Three things to do with it:

• A window, if you have one. Nothing else does as much. Keep the sill clear, avoid a wall unit that crowds it, and let the run terminate in light.
• A full-height element. A tall larder, a floor-to-ceiling shelf, an oven housing. A vertical stop at the far end reads as a destination and closes the run deliberately.
• A seat or a narrow table. In a longer galley, a 400mm deep ledge across the closed end with two stools converts dead space into the reason people come into the room.

What not to do: end a run in a half-height base unit with nothing above it. That reads as unfinished and draws the eye to the emptiest part of the room.

Light, because narrow rooms are dark rooms

Galleys usually have one window at one end and solid wall along the sides, so the middle is always the darkest point.

Under-cabinet lighting is not decorative here, it is the working light for the whole worktop, and it should run the full length of the wall units rather than sitting in two short strips. Above that, ceiling light should be a line of downlights along the run rather than a single central pendant, which in a narrow room puts your own shadow onto the work surface.

Reflective surfaces genuinely help in a galley in a way they do not in a larger room: gloss or satin doors, a light worktop and a full-height splashback pass what light there is down the room instead of absorbing it. If you want colour, put it on the base units and keep the wall units and walls pale, so the upper half of a narrow room stays light. Our notes on choosing kitchen cabinet doors cover finishes and what each costs to live with.

Ventilation: the rule that catches galley projects

A galley concentrates cooking moisture in a narrow space with limited air movement, and Building Regulations have something specific to say about it. Under Approved Document F, the minimum intermittent extract rate for a kitchen is:

• 30 litres per second where the extract is a hood adjacent to the hob, ducted to outside.
• 60 litres per second where there is no hood over the hob, or the hood does not vent outside.

The trap is recirculating hoods. A charcoal-filter hood that blows air back into the room does not count as extract, so where one is fitted it has to be supplemented by a separate mechanical extract fan going to outside air. A lot of flat kitchens have a recirculating hood and nothing else, which was never compliant for new work.

These rates apply to new dwellings and material changes of use. Replacing a kitchen in an existing home does not oblige you to upgrade the system, provided you do not make the existing ventilation less satisfactory. Move the hob to the other run, though, and you are into new ducting and the rules bite.

Ducting matters in a galley for a practical reason too: the shortest external route from the hob wall is often through the side wall rather than up, and rigid ducting on a short run performs far better than flexible hose looped through a ceiling void.

What a galley kitchen costs

A galley is usually cheaper than the equivalent floor area laid out as an L or a U, for two reasons: no corner units, which are the most expensive carcasses per litre of usable storage, and shorter worktop runs with fewer joins.

Against UK ranges, a galley refit typically lands toward the lower half of each band. A budget galley with flat-pack or entry-level rigid units and laminate worktops sits around £8,000 to £15,000 fitted. Mid-range, with better rigid carcasses and a solid-surface or quartz worktop, runs roughly £15,000 to £25,000. London and the South East add 20 to 35% on the same specification, almost entirely in trade rates rather than the units. The full breakdown of new kitchen costs sets out where each pound goes.

The costs that surprise people in a galley specifically: moving the hob or sink to the opposite run (new plumbing, new electrics, potentially new ducting), and any structural work at the closed end. Both are building work, not kitchen work, and they are priced separately.

Six mistakes worth avoiding

1. Measuring to the plaster and not to the skirting. Skirting, pipe boxing and out-of-square walls routinely eat 30mm to 60mm. Measure the gangway at three points along the run and plan to the narrowest.
2. Wall units on both sides at full height. In a 2,400mm room this makes the upper half of the space feel like 1,700mm. Pick one side.
3. Forgetting the door swing. Kitchen door, larder door, dishwasher, oven, and the appliance you have not chosen yet. Draw every swing on the plan.
4. A pendant in the middle. It is the one light position guaranteed to put you in your own shadow at the worktop.
5. Bins in the gangway. A pull-out bin inside a base unit is not a luxury in a galley, it is the difference between a clear walkway and an obstacle.
6. Treating it as a small kitchen problem. A galley is a shape problem, not a size problem. A 12 square metre galley and a 12 square metre L-shape need different plans; our L-shaped kitchen guide covers the alternative if your room will take it, and the small kitchen dimensions page has the wider table of British unit sizes.

Opening one end up

If the galley backs onto a dining room or a reception and the dividing wall is not structural, removing it turns the layout into a single-run kitchen along one wall of a larger room, with the far run replaced by an island or a peninsula. That changes the gangway question entirely: an island needs 1,000mm clear all round as an absolute minimum and 1,200mm where people pass behind a seated stool.

It is the most effective thing you can do to a cramped galley and also the most expensive, because it involves structural calculations, a steel or a lintel, and building control. Worth pricing properly before falling in love with it. Open plan kitchen and living room layouts covers what actually changes when the wall goes.

Frequently asked questions

What is the minimum width for a galley kitchen? For units on both sides with standard 600mm base units, 2,400mm wall to wall: 600mm of units, a 1,200mm clear gangway and another 600mm of units. With units on one side only, 1,800mm. Below 1,800mm you need reduced-depth 500mm carcasses or a rethink, because a gangway under 1,000mm cannot accommodate an open appliance door.

Is 1,000mm enough between galley kitchen runs? It is walkable but it is not comfortable, and it fails the door test. Most base unit and appliance doors project around 600mm when open, so at 1,000mm an open dishwasher leaves 400mm to squeeze past. Use 1,000mm only where the room simply will not give you more, and pair it with reduced-depth units on one side if you can.

Should the sink and hob be on the same side in a galley kitchen? Yes, where the run is long enough. Keeping sink, prep space and hob on one wall means the whole cooking sequence happens without crossing the gangway, which matters most when you are carrying hot pans. Put the fridge, tall storage and the oven opposite, since those are fetch-and-return trips.

Do galley kitchens add or reduce value? Neither, on layout alone. Buyers respond to whether the kitchen feels usable and light, not to the shape on the floor plan. A well-executed galley with proper gangway, good lighting and a resolved far end shows better than a cramped L-shape with a useless corner unit. What does reduce value is a galley you cannot pass in.

Can I fit an island in a galley kitchen? Not in a true galley: an island needs 1,000mm clearance on every side as a minimum, so a room would need to be roughly 3,600mm wide to take a run, an island and two gangways. What works in narrower rooms is a peninsula at the open end, which gives you the worktop and the seat without the all-round clearance.

Do I need a new extractor if I am replacing a galley kitchen? Not automatically. Replacing a kitchen in an existing home does not require you to upgrade ventilation, provided the work does not leave the existing arrangement less satisfactory. You do need to meet the Part F rates, 30 l/s with a ducted hood over the hob or 60 l/s without, if you are building new, changing the use of the building, or moving the hob to a position that needs new ducting.

Sources

• Approved Document F, Ventilation (gov.uk)
• Metric data: UK kitchen standard sizes, First In Architecture