A galley is two parallel runs with an aisle between them. It is the layout professional kitchens use, because everything is within a pivot rather than a walk. In a house it fails for exactly one reason: the aisle is the wrong width.
We remodel a lot of galleys in Vancouver — post-war houses on the East Side, 1970s apartments, and the long narrow kitchens in converted Kitsilano character houses where a back porch was absorbed into the kitchen decades ago.
How wide should a galley kitchen aisle be?
Between 1,000 mm and 1,200 mm for a single cook. Below 900 mm two people cannot pass and an open dishwasher blocks the room entirely. Above 1,400 mm the layout loses its efficiency and you are walking between zones rather than pivoting.
| Aisle width | How it works | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Under 900 mm | One person only; an open oven door blocks the aisle | Too narrow |
| 900 – 1,000 mm | Works for one cook; tight when a dishwasher is open | Acceptable minimum |
| 1,000 – 1,200 mm | One cook comfortable, two can pass, all doors clear | The target range |
| 1,200 – 1,400 mm | Two cooks work comfortably side by side | Ideal if you have it |
| Over 1,500 mm | Efficiency lost; consider a peninsula or island instead | Too wide for a galley |
Measure between the finished cabinet fronts, not between the walls. Counters overhang the boxes by 20 to 25 mm on each side, and handles add more.
Which run gets the sink and which gets the range
Put the sink and dishwasher on one run and the range on the other. That splits the wet and hot zones so two people are not competing for the same metre of floor, and it puts a pivot rather than a walk between washing and cooking.
The sink usually goes on the run with the window if there is one, both for light and because the plumbing is often already on that wall. The fridge belongs at the end of a run nearest the entrance, so somebody grabbing milk does not walk into the working aisle.
The one arrangement to avoid is sink and range on the same run with less than 900 mm between them. That is the configuration that makes a galley feel cramped regardless of how wide the aisle is.
Getting storage out of a narrow room
- Run wall cabinets to the ceiling: roughly 30% more volume in the same footprint
- Choose 400 mm deep wall cabinets over 300 mm on the run without the range — the extra 100 mm holds dinner plates flat
- Deep drawers throughout the base run rather than doors and fixed shelves
- A 150 mm pull-out at the end of a run for oils, bottles and spices
- Shallow open shelving on one wall keeps the room from feeling boxed in
- Toe-kick drawers recover 40 to 60 litres of storage most kitchens waste entirely
Lighting a galley so it stops reading as a corridor
A galley needs three lighting layers: continuous LED strip under both wall runs for task light, recessed downlights positioned over the front edge of the counter rather than the centre of the aisle, and something warm at the far end to stop the room dead-ending in shadow.
The single most common lighting mistake in a galley is a row of downlights straight down the middle of the aisle. That puts every light behind you and your own shadow onto every work surface. Moving them 300 mm toward the cabinets fixes it.
In a Vancouver kitchen that gets grey light for months, colour temperature matters: 2700–3000K at CRI 90+ makes a narrow room feel warm rather than institutional. See kitchen lighting installation.
When a galley should stop being a galley
If one of the two runs is against a non-load-bearing wall separating the kitchen from a living or dining room, removing it converts the galley into a peninsula or island layout and usually transforms how the whole floor works.
That is a remodel rather than a renovation, and it typically adds $8,000 to $25,000 depending on whether the wall is structural. See open-concept conversion for what is involved.
