If you are unfamiliar with kitchen layout and design make sure you map out your kitchen before coming up with even preliminary designs.
Space is Misleading
You may think your kitchen space is big enough for cabinets, an island, a fireplace, etc. but it is very difficult to judge spaciousness without physically mapping measurements out. Space is eaten up very quickly by items, especially since you need adequate room to move around each item comfortably. Visually imagining the area is not a good way to come up with ideas for your redesign.
To start, make scale drawings of your kitchen without any cabinets or appliances. Include items such as heating vents, windows, doors, etc. You need to plan around (or make plans to change) any existing permanent items.
Make Scale Versions of Appliances
If you know the dimensions of the appliances you will be putting into the kitchen, make small paper cutouts to scale of the floorspace taken up by the appliances. If you are using stock cabinets and you know the dimensions of the cabinetry available, also make cutouts of the floorspace taken up by the individual units. Cutouts may seem silly at first, but they are an excellent way to play with placement of items in the kitchen. You can easily move the pieces around to see the arrangement possibilities.
Doors are very hard to judge – cut out a scale door including the area the door covers when it swings open. It’s easy to forget about the swing space needed.
If you will be getting custom cabinets made, you will have a little more leeway with measurements. After you know what kind of cabinets you would like, find out what restrictions there are on the construction sizes.
Your little version of the kitchen will be very helpful in deciding approximately where you’d like to place everything.
Kitchen Software
If you prefer to work on the computer, software is available to perform the same function on the computer screen. Ikea has a free online kitchen planning tool, but measurements are restricted to certain Ikea products.