How to Avoid Common Kitchen Design Mistakes

Design for the clean, not just the cook

The single biggest lesson from years of maintenance work is this: a kitchen has to be designed for the day it needs cleaning, not just the day it opens. Two published specifications sit at the heart of that, and they are meant to be read together. DW/172, the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) Specification for Kitchen Ventilation Systems, tells you how to design and install the extract system. TR/19 Grease, also from BESA, sets out how that system must be cleaned and maintained once it is in use. Design under the first and you make compliance with the second achievable rather than impossible.

Access is where the two standards meet. DW/172 requires access panels of sufficient number, quality and size to give unrestricted reach to every internal surface and in-line component. In practice that means panels at regular intervals - commonly every two to three metres wherever the run allows - and at every bend, filter and fan where grease gathers. Skip them at design stage and you condemn the building to partial cleans forever, because a cleaning technician cannot decontaminate a surface they physically cannot reach. When we survey a system that has never been cleanable, the fault is almost always missing or undersized access, and retrofitting panels into live ductwork is far more disruptive and expensive than specifying them on the drawing.

Why does this matter beyond tidiness? Because grease in ductwork is fuel. TR/19 Grease works to a measurable benchmark - grease deposits should be controlled to a mean average of no more than 200 microns between cleans, which is roughly half the thickness of a business card. Beyond that, the fire risk climbs. Your insurer cares too: commercial property and liability policies routinely carry conditions on extract cleaning frequency and evidence, and some demand more than the standard baseline. Fail to keep records and you can find a fire claim challenged or a policy treated as invalid. A well-designed system with proper access makes that evidence easy to produce, because the whole run can actually be cleaned and photographed to a verifiable standard.

The same design-for-cleaning principle runs through the rest of the space. Continuous, non-porous surfaces such as stainless steel, coved junctions instead of sharp corners, sealed floors that drain properly, and enough clearance around equipment to get a mop and a cloth behind it all pay for themselves every week. Hygiene ratings under the Food Standards Agency scheme reward exactly this kind of thinking - inspectors look at whether the structure itself can be kept clean, not just whether it is clean on the day. Workflow decisions belong in the same conversation: separating clean and dirty flows, giving allergen work its own zone and building in a logical path from delivery to plate protects food safety and keeps the kitchen moving. If allergen handling is a real pressure point in your operation, it is worth reading how to keep allergen orders fast without mistakes, because the layout you choose either helps that or fights it.

None of this needs to slow a project down. It needs a few questions asked early: where does the make-up air come from, how does the gas interlock prove airflow, where are the access panels, and how will someone clean this in two years' time? Answer those on the drawing and you avoid the common faults that turn a smart new kitchen into a maintenance headache. Wash-down temperatures around 60°C, sensible drainage falls and easy-reach services are all small details that compound into a kitchen that stays compliant with far less effort.