Wet kitchen and dry kitchen, properly separated
A Juhu house of any size runs two kitchens: a dry kitchen visible from the living space where tea, breakfast and plating happen, and a wet or service kitchen behind it where the heavy cooking, washing and bulk storage live. Getting the split wrong produces a beautiful room nobody uses.
| Dry kitchen | Wet / service kitchen | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical run | 6 – 9 running feet | 9 – 13 running feet |
| Cooking | Induction or a two-burner hob, coffee, toaster | Full gas hob, high-output burner, pressure cooking |
| Extraction | 600–900 mm chimney, appearance matters | 1,200 mm heavy-duty ducted, baffle filters, high CFM |
| Surfaces | Stone or quartz, veneer or acrylic shutters | Quartz or SS counter, laminate shutters, SS dado behind the hob |
| Storage | Crockery, glassware, dry goods for the day | Bulk stock, utensils, pressure cookers, spice systems |
| Washing | Glass rinse sink | Double bowl, drainer, dishwasher, mop sink |
| Ventilation | Comfortable, conditioned | Mechanical extract plus an openable window; not conditioned |
The common mistake is building two dry kitchens — a beautiful second room with no extract and no bulk storage. The service kitchen has to be able to take a genuinely messy day.
Designing for the person who actually cooks
- Counter height follows the cook, not the standard. 850 mm is the default and it is wrong for a lot of people. We measure the primary cook's wrist height and set the counter at 100 to 120 mm below it, which on our Juhu projects has ranged from 810 to 900 mm.
- Reach zones are mapped before the drawer plan. Daily items between 600 and 1,400 mm, weekly items above and below, and bulk in the tall units or the utility. If a cook has to fetch a stool to reach the everyday masala, the design has failed regardless of what it looks like.
- Door swings are checked against the working triangle. An open dishwasher door that blocks the route from hob to sink is a daily irritation that the drawing set should have caught.
- The service kitchen needs a chair. Prep work here is long. A perch point with a clear knee space next to the prep counter is a 600 mm decision that changes a working day.
- Two people cook. Most Juhu households have a second person in the kitchen at least part of the day, so clear widths go to 1,200 mm rather than 1,050 mm and the sink and hob are not on the same run.
Worked example: 18 running feet across dry and wet kitchens, JVPD
The two halves are specified differently and priced differently: 7 running feet of dry kitchen in veneer at ₹58,000 and 11 running feet of wet kitchen in membrane at ₹34,000 — a blended ₹43,300 across the eighteen.
| Component | ₹ lakh | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Dry kitchen shutters and carcass — 7 rft, veneer on BWP | 2.58 | Hand-finished edge; the room is seen from the living space |
| Wet kitchen shutters and carcass — 11 rft, membrane on BWP | 2.34 | WPC under both sinks; every cut edge sealed |
| Hardware — SS 316 hinges and runners, tandem drawers, spice and tall pull-outs | 0.92 | SS 316 throughout, not only on the exposed side |
| Counters — 38 sq ft quartz in the dry kitchen, stainless on the wet hob run | 0.74 | Jointed at the corners; a full slab does not reach a JVPD first floor |
| Dado and backsplash | 0.32 | Stone in the dry kitchen, SS behind the service hob |
| Two chimneys and two hobs, both ducted | 0.42 | 1,200 m³/hr on the service side, 900 mm on the dry |
| Three sinks and taps, with sealed cut-outs | 0.18 | Double bowl and mop sink in the service kitchen, glass rinse in the dry |
| Electrical, dedicated circuits and gas-line work | 0.16 | Circuits for the oven, dishwasher and both chimneys |
| Templating, site assembly and installation | 0.14 | Two counter template visits, one per kitchen |
| Total, ex-GST | 7.80 | ₹43,300 blended per running foot on 18 running feet |
Add 18% GST. Excludes the appliance package — oven, microwave, dishwasher, wine cabinet and both refrigerators — which came to ₹3.85 lakh and was fixed, with model numbers, before the carcass drawing was issued.
Two kitchens, one household, planned around the cook
Coastal specification in a kitchen
A kitchen is the wettest room in a Juhu house and it sits in salt air. The corrosion failures we are called to fix are always the same four items, and all four are cheap to get right at the start: hinges and runners in SS 304 instead of SS 316 within 600 metres of the beach; unsealed board edges at the sink cut-out; mild steel under-counter brackets; and chrome-plated taps rather than solid stainless. Getting those right adds roughly 4% to a Juhu kitchen and roughly triples the service life of the parts that fail first.
The other item worth naming is the countertop template. Jointed stone in a Juhu kitchen has to be templated after the carcass is standing, not drawn from a plan, because a forty-year-old JVPD wall is rarely square and a 6 mm error at the corner is visible forever.
For Juhu overall see interior designers in Juhu; for a full home see residential interior designers in Juhu. Brand, hardware and warranty detail is on modular kitchen designers in Mumbai.
Juhu kitchen work by Greenbox Design Studio.
Frequently asked questions
Do I really need a separate wet kitchen?+
If the household cooks Indian food daily and entertains, yes. A single kitchen that is both presentable and capable of a full day's cooking is a compromise on both counts — extraction sized for a high-output burner is loud and visually heavy, and bulk storage is not attractive. The split lets each half be good at one thing. Below about 14 running feet of total run, though, one well-planned kitchen beats two cramped ones.
What hardware should a Juhu kitchen use?+
SS 316 hinges and runners within about 600 metres of the beach, SS 304 further inland, sealed edges at every cut-out including the sink and hob, solid stainless taps rather than chrome-plated brass, and stainless or aluminium under-counter brackets instead of mild steel. That specification adds roughly 4% and it is the difference between hinges that last a decade and hinges that pit in two years.
How do you decide the counter height?+
By measuring the person who cooks. We take their wrist height standing relaxed and set the counter 100–120 mm below it. Across our Juhu projects that has produced counters from 810 to 900 mm, against a default of 850. Where two people cook regularly and their heights differ significantly, we split the run — a lower prep zone and a standard-height hob run.
What does a large Juhu kitchen cost in total?+
Our 18 running foot two-kitchen example was ₹7.80 lakh ex-GST for the kitchens themselves, plus a ₹3.85 lakh appliance package bought separately — ₹11.65 lakh all told. A single generous 12 running foot kitchen at high specification runs ₹6.5 to ₹8 lakh, with ₹2.5 to ₹4 lakh of appliances on top. The two variables that move it most are the appliance package and whether the counters are quartz or a natural stone that has to be book-matched.
How long does a Juhu kitchen take?+
Five to seven weeks for a dry and wet kitchen pair, including two countertop template visits — one for each kitchen, after each carcass is installed. A single kitchen is four to five weeks. Appliance lead times are the usual cause of delay, so we fix the appliance schedule before the carcass drawing is issued rather than after.