The 13 Best Kitchen Design Tips We Learned From Ina Garten

Ina Garten's kitchens have long been favorites of her fans over the years. They adore the comforting, easy designs that have allowed Garten to create some really delicious food. If you've watched her cooking shows, you've seen how effortlessly she's able to move between the sink and stove, and how organized each kitchen has looked. That wasn't just a cosmetic decision for her shows — what you've seen have been designs that she's found to be the best for running a busy and productive yet calming and happy kitchen.

Garten has been open about what she finds to be the best tips for designing kitchens. Some of these are going to be easier to use if you're able to design a kitchen from the ground up. Even if you have only a rental apartment kitchen to work with, she's got advice that will make being in that kitchen a lot more enjoyable. Here are 13 of the best kitchen design tips we learned from Ina Garten.

One of the first things Ina Garten will tell you about her kitchen, when asked why people love it, is that it isn't fancy. It looks fancy compared to the standard apartment kitchen most people are familiar with, but when you look at it closely, it's a really functional space — everything has a use. There are some decorative aspects, of course, but her kitchens are not meant to be showcases. They've been designed so that she can work, and any decorative aspects are icing on the mocha chocolate icebox cake.

Her advice regarding setting up a kitchen like hers focuses on keeping things simple. That sounds more like a design for an office kitchen on paper, but in real life, it means only to make sure everything in there makes it easy for you to cook. The kitchen is a place where you have to do actual work. You're washing, chopping, cleaning, mixing, and cooking, and the last thing you need is something that creates extra work for you. That doesn't mean you can't have items that don't do anything other than look good — just be sure they don't get in your way.

If you're lucky enough to be able to design it, one very important feature to have in your kitchen is to have enough space for everything. Don't create a small pantry where item upon item will be stacked up in multiple rows, hiding the things in the back. Don't buy a smaller refrigerator where you can't see what you put on the shelf the day before. Get the bigger refrigerator that lets you easily find what you need. Do what you can to design shelves, pantries, and even appliance choices with space in mind so that you don't have to shove things out of the way to retrieve the items behind them. Counters and kitchen islands should also have adequate clearance to make it easy to move around the kitchen.

If you look at Ina Garten's social media, you'll see shelves that hold dishes that are all easily visible because there's enough room horizontally and vertically to see toward the back of each shelf. When you place plates on shelves like these, for example, you have enough room to arrange them in staggered rows so that you still have two rows, but nothing is hiding behind something else.

Ina Garten likes to keep things simple by limiting the color choices she uses in her kitchens for things like dishes and tools. Some color is good, but she's not a fan of having a jumble of different colors with some standing out randomly, such as having mostly stainless steel utensils with a brightly colored spatula in the middle. She also organizes items like kitchen tools by material, in addition to color. This gives her kitchen a more organized look because there aren't that many colors and styles competing for your attention.

She's noted multiple times in interviews and on social media that she likes white utensil crocks with the stainless steel and white/wood utensils separated, and even her plates tend to be all white. If that sounds a bit boring, keep in mind that white shows off food much better than darker colors do, and white also makes it easier to see dirt so you can clean it up.(Forget hiding dirt when it comes to kitchens; this is one area where you want to clean up whatever you can). When designing your own kitchen, you don't have to follow Garten's color choices if you prefer brighter colors. Just try limit the choices so that the colors of the kitchen look cohesive, rather than disorganized.

Everything in your kitchen should have a place, and in Ina Garten's kitchen, the place for the things she uses often is almost always within reach. If she uses something often, she doesn't put it in a spot she'll have to go back to a few hours later. Granted, if you're in a small kitchen, you might not have the luxury of being able to leave everything out. If you're designing a new or remodeled kitchen, though, here's your chance to give yourself enough counter space to leave out the things you know you use for most meals.

Leaving everything out may seem like an invitation for the kitchen to become messy, but Garten's solution is to keep things organized. Not only does she have things like cooking utensils organized by color and material, but she makes sure that the layout is neat — she doesn't leave things in random spots. The utensils are all in crocks, for example, neatly lined up along the edge of a cutting board. This is an easy design tip to use no matter what your kitchen is like.

Look at any of Ina Garten's kitchens over the years, and you'll see some colorful choices. Maybe a small row of books to one side with multicolored covers, or a plant with autumn-hued leaves located just off-camera. Mostly these days, you'll see a neutral and light palette in most of the kitchen, from white plates to cream-colored cabinets to black countertops. Garten prefers neutral colors so that everything matches, such as having all-white small appliances, but there are other reasons to stick with neutrals for your main palette.

Light colors help make spaces look like they're more open and relaxing. Using a neutral color scheme (including one that uses darker neutral colors) essentially makes the kitchen a blank slate where you can use more colorful highlights to add variety. It also makes it a lot easier to change how the kitchen looks because it's easier to change highlights than it is to repaint the entire thing.

One of the classic kitchen workflow layouts is the triangle. This is when the stove/oven, refrigerator, and sink are placed so that they form sort of a triangle shape, and it's one of the most functional layouts you can have. Note that the three don't have to form a perfect triangle. You can have two of them, say, the stove and refrigerator, against one wall while the sink is across from them or on an adjacent wall. This is a layout Ina Garten uses, with her sink in the kitchen island across from the stove, and the refrigerator placed at the other end of the counter from the stove.

Other versions include having all three on three different walls of a square kitchen (with the fourth being the entrance), or one where the sink is in the corner with the stove and refrigerator on the two walls extending from that corner. You want at least 4 feet between them, but no more than 9 feet, if possible. The idea behind the kitchen triangle is to make movement and work more efficient and faster-flowing. Compare the triangle to a kitchen where all three might be stuck on the same wall in a row; moving between them isn't as efficient, as you feel like you're just walking back and forth along the length of the kitchen floor. The triangle layout was invented by Lillian Gilbreth in the 1920s, who wanted a design that allowed women to do everything without having to walk far to get from one appliance to another.

An important characteristic for a kitchen is that it should be comforting. That can mean designing a kitchen with lots of places to sit and a lot of natural light, or it could mean just finding materials like rattan for baskets that make a rental kitchen look a little more homey. Comfort and making people comfortable is important to Ina Garten, who's credited her father's design taste. He was a doctor who purposefully decorated his office so that patients would feel comfortable there and not like they had just walked into a hospital.

One thing that Garten does is use lamps in her kitchen. Not just the regular overhead lamps that we all have or the videoconferencing lights used when filming, but table lamps. You won't really see these right in her cooking space, but she'll have them near, such as on one side of her kitchen island. Lamps like these give off warmer light that makes the space seem less institutional. If you place table lamps in your kitchen, keep them away from the sink and stove/oven, and out of any workspaces that can get messy. Place them just outside of that range.

If you watch Ina Garten's videos or check out her social media, you'll often see long tables decorated for a holiday dinner. However, that's not her ideal size of table for a regular dinner party. If you want to design your kitchen like Garten would, you really want a table that's 48 inches round and large enough to seat six people. According to her, that's the perfect size and shape for a close, relatively intimate gathering that allows people to more easily chat with each other.

Of course, that means you'll need a large enough space so that everyone can get to and leave the table comfortably. In general, you'll want at least 36 inches of space between the table and the walls, but 48 inches is even better. Remember, other furniture like sideboards and carts count as "walls" for the sake of proper spacing. Even if a nearby cart is something you can move out of the way, it's going to make your dining space seem more crowded and less pleasant if you have to keep moving it in order to access a chair.

Ina Garten likes to keep a bowl of lemons and limes on the kitchen counter for several very good reasons — one is that they look good! Imagine bright yellow and green citrus fruit in the middle of your kitchen island or on the counter, and see if that image doesn't make your kitchen look prettier in your mind (And imagine that citrusy fragrance drifting through the kitchen, too).

The second reason is that she's found that when recipes appear to be lacking that special something, that something is often lemon juice or zest. Leaving that bowl on the counter keeps those lemons in a convenient spot where she can grab one as needed, instead of searching for items she stored somewhere else. That goes a long way toward making your kitchen more functional while also making it look nicer. The third reason is that room-temperature citrus is easier to juice. If you prefer to store lemons in the refrigerator, you'll need to let them come to room temperature.

It's true that having exactly the right type of knife for a specific cutting task can make that task easier, and it's also true that having a large knife block looks terrific. However, it's not true that either of those are necessary for good food prep and cooking. In fact, Ina Garten says you need only three knives in your kitchen: a paring knife, a slicing knife, and a chef's knife.

Those three knives can take care of most cutting and slicing duties without a problem. You might make dishes that require a different knife or a cleaver, and you should create a space for the knives that suit your cooking best. For example, if you use a lot of chopped vegetables in your cooking, a santoku knife may be helpful. If you bake your own bread, a serrated bread knife may be better for slicing thicker, crustier loaves. Garten's point is that you don't need a huge collection of knives for the sake of appearing like someone who cooks a lot. Get and keep the knives that you actually need to use in your cooking.

Are your cookbooks currently in a pile on the kitchen table? Are they jammed onto a bookshelf in a room on the other side of your home? If you're redesigning your kitchen, create space for them in or right by the kitchen. Ina Garten actually created a cookbook library in her home because hers were initially scattered around the house and even stacked on the floor. Granted, Garten has a tremendous number of cookbooks that take up an entire wall in her home, and you probably don't have quite as many. However, that makes this tip a lot easier for you to put into action.

Two issues to keep in mind as you plan where your cookbook nook is going to go are: how often you buy cookbooks and how much room you think you'll need in the future as your collection expands, and; how far grease may spatter from the stove as you cook. Unless you're absolutely sure you'll never buy another cookbook, definitely leave some extra room and plan for a bigger cookbook space to accommodate changes and new acquisitions. As for the grease, remember that it doesn't take much oil to create that greasy film that sometimes ends up on your cabinets near your stove. Position cookbooks accordingly so that they don't end up covered with grease spatters, too.

The sink is one of the places where you'll spend the most time in the kitchen. The sink and the counter next to it are where you rinse off fruit, drain pasta, chop everything you're using in your meal, and more. If you're going to be at the sink a lot, make sure you have something nice to look at. You will want to look up occasionally, and Ina Garten likes to have a great view out of a window from wherever her sink is.

The sink doesn't have to be right at the wall with the window. Instead, you can place it on a kitchen island that faces a window or glass door across the room. Both sites have advantages and disadvantages; for example, if the best view is the one from a glass patio door, then you're obviously not going to be able to have a sink right at the wall. Having a sink in a kitchen island also gives you a lot more workspace around the sink, as islands tend to be wider than countertops by the wall. Placing a sink right at the window, rather than on an island facing toward a window across the room, allows you to leave the island free to use as a serving area or display. Plus, the view is right there in front of you instead of being in the distance.

As we've already pointed out, Ina Garten herself promotes keeping things simple and functional. You want that part of the house to let you do your job. However, all the functionality in the world won't help you if your kitchen is full of things that make you dread being in there. This can be anything from a poorly placed refrigerator with the door opening to the wrong side to that giant stand mixer you never use because it's a pain to clean.

To the extent that you're able to, remove or change those things that make the kitchen less enjoyable to be in there. Keep in mind that being overly minimalist in the kitchen can also be a barrier to having fun (in other words, you can make the space too practical for your own good). If you're lucky enough to be able to redesign and remodel your entire kitchen, think about what would make you look forward to being in there. What would make the energy of the kitchen really feel like it's breezy and pleasant? Even Garten, whose kitchens have long been places where she no doubt liked being, claimed in an Instagram post that after she remodeled her kitchen during the pandemic, she was having fun testing recipes in [her] new kitchen.