This is the question that has finally roused me from passive observer to active garden webber. I love design books and have been collecting for years.

Favorite kitchen books include Great Kitchens by Whitaker, Mahoney and Jordan (Design Ideas from Top Chefs). I love seeing how professionals choose to cook at home.

My new favorite is Kitchen Centric by Mick De Giulio filled with absolutely fabulous kitchens he's designed.

Fine Homebuilding Special Kitchen and Bath Issues available at newstands are up-to-date, educational, and full of great ideas.

I've looked at these over and over again. I hope this helpful.

I must own hundreds... I'm hard put to pick just one. BUT. If I absolutely had to I'd recommend:

Kitchen Redos, Revamps, Remodels, And Replacements: Without Murder, Madness, Suicide, Or Divorce

http://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Redos-Revamps-Remodels-Replacements/dp/068808589X

This isn't just a picture book like so many of the kitchen idea guides so if your not someone who enjoys reading a good sized book it might not be what you are looking for. It details the story of one woman making a chef's kitchen as she makes each choice and handles major issues as they occur. Very funny and very helpful.

I don't rate it as necessarily being the most technical or etc but it's definitely the best/funnest/helpfullest? read.

"Kitchens for the Rest of Us - From the Kitchen You Have to the Kitchen You Love" Peter Lemos. These are remodeling, beautiful and varied.

1001 Ideas for Kitchen Organization.

Hands down the best resource for storage ideas and solutions.

Here is a link that might be useful: 1001 Ideas for Kitchen Organization

Kitchen Centric, By Mick DeGiulio. Hands down, the best!! Love it. Best place to purchase is Amazon. Enjoy :)

This is still one of my all-time favorites:

I saw your post and immediately thought of the Sunset book. It is sitting next to my computer. I really like it. The more I look, the more I see. Thanks for posting this thread. I will be interested to look at some of the other recommended books.

So far,

Kitchens That Work: The Practical Guide to Creating a Great Kitchen by Martin Edic

New Kitchen Idea Book (Taunton Home Idea Books) by Joanne Kellar Bouknight

have been good value for money.

On the whole, kitchen design books seem more interested in what a kitchen looks like than in how easy it is to prep, cook, dish up, clean, and put stuff away in it. The only real exception I've found is

The Complete Guide to Kitchen Design With Cooking in Mind by Donald E. Slivers

which says smart things ... but it's a short tract, not a "complete guide," and the writing is bad-tempered.

It's odd that even though we're building workshops to cook in, it's hard to find photographs showing actual cooking in a kitchen, much less the whole sequence of tasks you do when you cook. (The "Design Ideas from Top Chefs" book mentioned above makes token efforts to show cooking, but they're pretty staged.)

Colin3 took the words right out of my mouth - definitely Donald Silvers' The Complete Guide to Kitchen Design with Cooking in Mind.

Worth the price of the book is his discussion of deeper counters than the standard 24" depth. We did that on one side of our small kitchen - the counters are 27" (plus overhang) atop standard depth cabinets of 24". The cabinets are pulled away from the wall 3". It is amazing how great the deeper counters make the cooking experience. Plus, we were able to fit the Kitchenaid dishwasher (a slightly deeper dishwasher than other brands) as a flush look, rather than it sticking out. Also, a regular depth fridge does not stick out as much with the deeper counters. We can prop up our big cookbook, and still have plenty of room for cutting board, ingredients, etc.

Some of the book is a little dated now. Kitchens have evolved so much and so quickly in the past few years. Nevertheless, the book has many useful ideas. I would round out my Kitchen Design book collection by adding some of the other books suggested on this thread. No single book can do it all.

Here is a link that might be useful: Donald Silvers' The Complete Guide to Kitchen Design

Thanks so much for all your great reading advice!

My favorite kitchen design books is purely for kitchen
Eye candy, nothing more. It is all about the fluff, the
pretty stuff, the pleasure of just looking at each kitchen
for hours on end. This is NOT a book to help with design
but just to feel good if you love different kitchens.

The second book is for the design ideas, the specifics
about space, time, money, function, details, details,
Did I say Details?

Another great planning book, perfect for the specifics
and planning.

And lastly I love some of Johnny Grey's quirky kitchens.
This book is great to see his ideas and creativity. This
one is another eye candy book but all good for the TKO.

Now if you can't get to a libary and would rather save
your money for your kitchen than spend on books there
are always blogs.

these are some great kitchen design blogs and kitchen
style design online places. Enjoy ~boxer

http://www.marthastewart.com/photogallery/our-favorite-kitchens

http://www.kitchens.com/design.aspx

http://www.superkitchens.com/

Looks great -- I just ordered up the Grey book. Especially with used versions available over Amazon, a lot of these things are like $10 a pop.

What's been helpful to me are plans plus sets of photos of one kitchen, because that gets you from small-scale ideas to how you put everything together. "Design Ideas from Top Chefs" does that, kind of. Do people know of design books that do a relatively small number of kitchens, but very thoroughly?

We have a bunch of these---someone on Freecycle was giving away all of their kitchen books just as we were starting to get serious about our project, lucky us!---but my two favorite, by far, are:

- Sunset Kitchens, which you already have. I LOVE this book! Whenever I get frustrated, I crack it open and look at the finished kitchens and keep reminding myself we'll get there eventually.

- Creative Homeowner's Ultimate Guide to Kitchens. This one is technically intended as a DIY guide, but it has been hugely useful even though we aren't doing too much on our own. It helps me understand what's involved in each task, so I know what's entailed if I'm asking the electrician or plumber to do something. It's helped me have intelligible conversations with contractors, and I don't think we could have pulled off GC'ing our project ourselves without this. It also has little "help you choose" guides to different kitchen components (e.g., "here are all the kinds of counters, and the pros/cons to each"), much like the Sunset book, so that's been helpful too. It's probably not quite detailed enough if you're actually doing everything yourself, but I think they publish a bunch more books specific to the various trades.

I also like Bungalow Kitchens since we're doing a bungalow kitchen, but probably not so useful to those who aren't. :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Creative Homeowner Ultimate Guide to Kitchens

Some of the books mentioned here were also favorites of mine. But I also got many good ideas from books that were not "kitchen" books. Axel Vervoordt's Timeless Interiors was very important for me as I was trying to understand what kinds of materials and textures to use in our vintage kitchen. I got the idea for the floor from this book, and that choice grounded the entire materials plan and color palette. I also liked the Country Living 500 Kitchen Ideas book. Finally, (and this isn't a book but . . .) I liked the Belgian Interiors site -- once I was on to the Axel Vervoordt bandwagon I was looking for other "belgian" kinds of kitchens and this site was like the eagle landing for me. I found that the look-and-feel challenges were the major ones for me -- and because the space was limited, and because we were re-using our old wood -- serious constraints that were simultaneously liberating -- many of the decisions about layout and function were decided for us almost automatically.