The Ideal Kitchen Island Overhang for Seating
Make sure your kitchen island is ready to seat your guests with this important information.
I’m guessing you’ve sat at a kitchen island to hang with friends or family, and just when you went to scoot your stool in, you banged your knees on the cabinets, am I right? When countertop overhangs are 8” or 9”, it just doesn’t cut it! Pro tip here - ideally, we want 12” of ‘leg room’ for comfortable island seating. So that means the countertop will overhang the back of the island by 12”. But what if you want a deeper overhang? Well, we’ve got a solution for that and it doesn’t require posts or visible brackets!
These brackets from Federal Brace are installed on the underside of the plywood sub-top that your pretty new countertop slab will sit on, so they don’t attach to your actual countertop material, and they’re not visible (unless you’re playing hide and seek under your overhang) - the best part - they don’t impact your seating at your island. You’ll never hit your knees on them. The images above show clear countertops to help demonstrate where they’re intended to be installed on any part of your kitchen island overhang.
Pro-tip number two - on the back sides of islands, I often design and order cabinet panels that are installed over the vertical part of the hidden bracket (seen on the Freedom and Harmony models), so you don’t see this part on the back of your island cabinets. Depending on your slab material and the depth of the countertop overhang you want, your contractor and slab fabricator will determine which type of support and how many supports are needed. Now that you know the pro tips behind getting the best seat in the house, you can design the kitchen island you’ve dreamed of!
Want help creating your ideal kitchen space? Let’s talk about your dream kitchen space today.