Could a Round Kitchen Island Drastically Improve the Flow of Your Kitchen?
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For many of the the best home innovations, necessity is the mother of invention. Case in point: The unusual shape of the kitchen island in this Balsam Lake, Wisconsin home was the creative fix to the challenges of an awkward layout.
The homeowners purchased the cabin for it's stunning lakefront location, but the original floorplan was not optimized for family gatherings—or for looking out at the breathtaking view. After considering several options, they decided to enlist their long-time design team and last year embarked on the process of tearing down the old structure and building an entirely new one
Not only was it an ambitious plan, but the team wanted to move fast. “There was only a nine-month turnaround from when we started,” says Krystal Kellermann, the senior designer, ASID, NCIDQ at O’Hara Interiors. The new home's angles mirrored the shoreline, so the layout followed the lake’s natural flow. This allowed every window on the backside of the property to face the water, capitalizing on the incredible view the family loved so much. To align with every twist and turn, the floor plan had to get creative in some spaces. One such odd formation was the kitchen, now shaped like a trapezoid. Because of the nontraditional angles, a square or rectangular island wouldn’t work.
Kellermann had a thought—why not make the island round?
She had originally pitched the idea of a perfect circle in the center of the space, but they quickly realized that it would jut out too far, hindering the necessary walkway and taking up too much space. The island became an elongated oval. Flattening the circle not only increased the counter space but allowed guests to move much more freely through the home’s main floor. A welcome afterthought, Kellermann realized that an oval structure meant that there would be no hard corners for little ones to run into.
“Every part of this home was designed for other people,” Kellerman says. Generous hosts, the clients chose each fixture and paint color in the kitchen to be welcoming and intuitive. “A clear beverage fridge lets guests know that drinks are there for the taking without having to ask,” she says. The same goes for the coffee maker above, custom fit with a deep drawer of mugs directly below.
The island's unusual shape has also made it ideal for socializing. “The shape of the island is much more intimate than say a traditional rectangular island because when you're sitting at the stools, there's a curvature, and so you're looking at each other rather than be all lined up in a row,” says Kellerman. “It’s the feeling this kitchen was designed to have.”
Worried about the potential storage losses of a round island, Kellermann began to plan exactly where each and every plate, pot, and piece of flatware would be stored to make the island as functional as possible. Working with the cabinet maker, the island’s drawers and single cabinet were made extra deep to make up for the lack of length. “The storage needed to be deep enough for a step ladder, which became our starting measurement,” says Kellermann.
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