Modular kitchen design in Bangalore: how one wall changes the whole room

A luxury kitchen rarely fails on its finish. It fails on one wall. In most Bangalore apartments the working run is one stretch of counter three to four metres long, and almost every decision in modular kitchen design in Bangalore comes back to how it is shared out. Sink, hob, the prep space between them, chimney, sockets and storage all want the same metres. Ask any designer you are shortlisting about that wall.

This piece is not about handle profiles. It is about the order of things along one run, and the clearances that make the order work.

01 The sequence along the run, and the gap in the middle

Work moves through a kitchen in one direction. Out of the refrigerator, into the sink, down wet, cut, onto the flame, off hot. A run in that order feels effortless. One that scatters the steps has the same symptom every time, somebody carrying dripping vegetables to the only free counter. So the run reads refrigerator, sink, drainage, preparation, hob, landing, mirrored for a left handed cook.

The part people underspend on is the gap in the middle. A widely used guideline asks for about 900mm of uninterrupted counter, and that is a floor rather than a target. At 1,050mm to 1,200mm you can leave a board out, keep a bowl beside it and still set a plate down. Below 600mm it is a ledge, and the work moves to the dining table. The sink needs margins too, roughly 600mm one side and 450mm the other. Conventions, not code.

02 Two places the hob should not go

The first is the end of a run. A hob needs clear counter both sides, because a pan leaves the flame hot and must go down within a step. The common guideline is at least 300mm one side and 380mm the other, though where a kadai comes off full and heavy, 400mm each side is honest. Crowd it against a return wall and one side has nowhere to land. Safety, before layout.

The second is under a window. A blind hangs above an open flame, a cross draught pulls the flame sideways, and a chimney cannot be mounted across a window, so the extraction moves and drags the hob with it. If a window is going over anything, give it to the sink. In the kitchen photographed here, a completed home at Sattva, Bangalore, the hob sits mid run with clear worktop either side, a tiled wall behind it, and the room’s only window away in the utility.

03 The wall behind the flame, and the air above it

Behind the hob the wall stops being decoration and becomes equipment. Take the splashback full height, worktop to the underside of the wall cabinets, usually 550mm to 650mm. Cheaper than the repaint it prevents. Directly behind the burners, ceramic and porcelain tile, toughened glass, granite and sintered stone take radiant heat without complaint. Engineered quartz needs care. It is dense, non porous and genuinely good material, but its resin binder gives way near 150C, so it belongs on the worktop, not behind a flame.

Above it, the chimney. The hood should be at least as wide as the hob, because smoke rises in a plume wider than the pan, and it sits 650mm to 750mm above a gas burner, which is the manufacturer’s instruction rather than a rule of thumb. Then the duct, which almost nobody checks. A 150mm run, short and straight to the outside, beats any figure on the box. Each 90 degree bend costs a real share of it, commonly quoted at 15 to 25 percent, so a 1,200 cubic metre hood behind three elbows and four metres of concertina pipe is not a 1,200 hood any more.

Then power. Count what lives permanently on the counter, mixer, grinder, kettle, toaster, and add the two you plug in while cooking. Four to six switched points along the wall is realistic, against the two most flats are handed over with. Set them 150mm to 250mm above the worktop, clear of the hob and out of splash range of the sink. A small line on a Bangalore interiors budget, and painful to revisit, because that means opening the splashback.

Light finishes the wall. A ceiling downlight stands behind you when you face the counter, so it puts your own shadow on the chopping board. A strip under the wall cabinets lights the surface from the front. Give it its own switch. And soft close on every drawer stops a gloss shutter chipping at its corner.

04 What to check in your own home

• Measure the prep gap, not the counter. Tape from sink edge to hob edge, reading only uninterrupted run. Under 900mm and the kitchen feels cramped.
• Put a hot pan down beside the hob. Stand where you would cook and set an imaginary kadai down without turning. Nothing clear within a step means carrying hot pans across the room.
• Follow the duct with your eyes. Hood to outside wall. Count the bends, pace the length. Three or more elbows, or flexible pipe through the ceiling, and the rating is theoretical.
• Count the sockets, then count again. Everything living on the counter, plus what you plug in while cooking. Four to six points, none behind the hob, none near the sink.
• Open the corner and reach in. If your arm cannot reach the back and your eyes cannot see it, that is not storage. Fit a pull out mechanism or a dead panel.

A note on the corner, which is where storage goes to die

Every L shaped and U shaped run has one. A blind corner cabinet gives roughly 300mm of depth no adult arm reaches, and it fills with things nobody has seen since handover. Fit a pull out mechanism, a carousel or swing out trays, and accept that the hardware costs more than the cabinet holding it. Elsewhere prefer drawers: a 900mm drawer shows everything it holds, a cupboard of the same width shows the front row.

05 How Furdo plans this

Design begins with the sequence on the working wall, fixing sink, drainage, preparation, hob and landing before finishes. Visualize shows it as high-definition, photoreal 3D renders of two rooms before you commit, where a short prep gap becomes obvious while it is cheap to move. Build is done in our in-house manufacturing facility, on branded certified plywood with Hettich hardware, and carries a 10-year warranty on the woodwork. The discipline scales up in our Bangalore villa planning guide.

06 Frequently asked questions