We are now renovating our house and we can't decide which kitchen layout would be best. The entrance to our house is at lower level, then when you walk up the steps and the first thing you see is our kitchen (if it were possible, we would obviously change that, but it's not possible..). The first option is to have an island in the center of the kitchen, giving some kind of separation to the work area of the kitchen, which is behind the island, to the stairs. The second option is just having a large U shape kitchen with either a round or rectangular kitchen table in the center. The downside of the latter, is that anyone who comes into our home will right away see the mess of our kitchen work space. Though I'm not sure if we put an island in the center if that would solve our problem. And if it won't solve that problem, then having the U shaped kitchen would be slightly more functional since you would have more space without anything in your way, and also would have more useful counter space. What do you think? I'm adding the two plans to this post