Shop notes · 2026-08-24

Will an island fit? The kitchen island math worth doing first

An island is the most requested piece in kitchen work and the most frequently forced one. Whether yours will work is a traffic question before it’s a cabinet question, and you can settle it this weekend with a tape measure and a roll of painter’s tape.

The clearance numbers

Measure from your counter edges, not your walls. An island needs aisle room on every working side:

• 42 inches between the island and any run of cabinets you cook from. That’s enough for one cook plus an open dishwasher door.
• 36 inches on a side that’s pure walkway, no appliances, no prep.
• 44 to 48 inches if two people genuinely cook at once, or if the fridge or oven opens into the aisle.

Work backward from those and the verdict is quick. A kitchen needs roughly 12 feet of clear width before a useful island fits; at 11 feet you can squeeze in something narrow, and below that the island makes the kitchen worse. Plenty of Fremont ranch kitchens sit right on that line, which is why we measure before we sketch.

The tape test

Tape the island’s footprint on the floor at full size, including the counter overhang, and cook in the kitchen for a week. Unload groceries. Empty the dishwasher. If you keep brushing the tape, the island is too big, and no drawing will fix what your hips already told you. The tape costs four dollars and has killed more bad islands than any designer.

Seating that people actually use

Island seating needs a 12-inch counter overhang at minimum, 15 if knees are involved, and 24 inches of width per seat. A 6-foot island seats three, not four. Corners don’t count as seats.

Depth matters more than people expect. A seating island wants to be 42 inches deep or more: 24 for the cabinet, 3 for overhang at the back, 15 in front of the stools. If the room can’t give that depth, a raised bar return or a peninsula usually serves the seating wish better than a shrunken island.

What should the island hold?

The storage inside is the part that separates a custom island from a big box with a slab on it. Decide what lives there before the design is drawn. The strongest candidates are the things you use at the island itself: mixing bowls, sheet pans on end, the stand mixer in a lift or a deep drawer, trash and recycling pulled out on the prep side. Deep drawers beat doors below counter height in almost every case; nobody enjoys kneeling into a blind cabinet.

If the island gets a sink or a cooktop, plan on it costing meaningfully more, because plumbing and venting come with it. Any island with a countertop also gets outlets under code, and you’ll be glad of them the first time the stand mixer comes out.

The money

A custom island alone typically runs $2,500 to $8,000 in our shop, driven by size, drawer count, and overhang support. The full breakdown lives on our cabinet cost page, including what moves a project inside that range.

Start with the tape. If the footprint survives a week of real cooking, bring us the dimensions and we’ll design to them.