January Pro to Pro

What do you think? E-mail us your feedback, contact information and the subject line, 'Pro to Pro' with your message.

Have a question and looking for feedback from industry peers? This month KBDN listens in on dialogue between industry professionals as excerpted from the KitchenBathPros.com online Design Discussion Forum.

RULE OF THREE

QUESTION
I have a customer who has been getting input from her decorator and architect friends and is now totally confused. They are telling her that she must have a pantry, but she wants a decorative “hutch” looking area.

I’ve tried a couple of different layout options, but I really don’t see a good way to incorporate both into the design, so I’d like to see her do the hutch instead of the pantry.

She’s opening up the room by tearing out part of a wall and adding about three 30"-wide base cabinets, so she’s already adding a good amount of storage.

The other thing she’s bringing up is the Rule of Three. She wants to put glass doors in her kitchen somewhere, but her friends told her she needs to have three of them because when you group items, it should be in multiples of three.

I’ve heard this for decorating and landscaping, but it’s never come up for me in designing a kitchen before. I’m a big fan of having everything balanced and symmetrical, but this multiple of three thing is something I just don’t think is necessary for the glass doors.

I’m not crazy about just a single glass door because, in my opinion, it just looks like it was plopped into the kitchen. I generally like to do double doors on the end of a run or sandwiched between solid door cabinets, or flanking something else, like either side of a window or cooktop. So I’m going to ask you, the pros, what do you think? Does the Rule of Three apply to cabinet design?

I don’t want to discredit her friends either, but I don’t think three glass doors are necessary; I think two is fine and will fit into her design nicely. I have a meeting with her Monday morning, so any advice would be helpful.
—Tinkerbell

RESPONSE 1
I’ve heard the Rule of Three before. More universal in interior design is the idea to group similar items in odd numbers. However, I think applying this “rule” to glass-front cabinet doors in counterintuitive because of the way doors work - either single-hinged doors or butt-hinged pairs. To try to do three glass doors would mean an odd hinge sequence: one single and one pair, three singles, etc.
I think the only time odd numbers of glass doors work is if all the doors are glass, or all the doors in a run. I hope this helps.
—mccabgal

RESPONSE 2
Yes, that’s a good way to present it. In my head, the Rule of Three doesn’t matter for kitchen design, but I wasn’t sure how to say it to the customer without just giving my standard Mom answer of “because I said so.” Thanks for
the input.
—Tinkerbell

RESPONSE 3
Any time I’ve seen the group of three applied, it was with three similar items but of different sizes. You might want to explain this to her and then tell her it wouldn’t look good if the doors were all different sizes.
—dans

RESPONSE 4
Boy, I really wish you could either upload that section of the plan as a jpeg here or link to a separate photo image site so I could see what you mean. It’s hard to comment without seeing it.

I think the proportion of the doors, whether there are two or three doors, has to be the right proportion with surrounding cabinetry. For example, to have two 24"-wide doors and several 12" or 15" base doors looks awkward. I think it’s more about proportion and balance with surrounding cabinetry than it is about the Rule of Three. And, that doesn’t mean that everything always has to be perfectly symmetrical. If you did another proportion in a different color, that would be better, if it doesn’t relate to surrounding proportions.