Height is irrelevant as a metric. You need 42” wide and at least 24” deep. 400-900 CFM, depending on how you cook. Plus the required Make Up Air system.

Patricia Colwell Consulting wrote: "IMO a hood with the proper CFM does not need to be wider than the cooktop" Aye, there's the rub -- defining 'proper.'

A range width hood against a wall with side curtains or cabinets will likely capture cooking plumes from the back burners, but front burner capture will require good hood aperture overlap of the pan bases unless extravagant flow rates are present to effectively extend the hood capture area by entraining plume effluent. Hoods are very poor at extending their flow rate very far from the hood edges. How well a given hood flow velocity (ft./min. = CFM/sq. ft.) works will depend on the velocity of the plume and how far the plume extends past the hood edge.

See plots in Chapter 30, 2003 ASHRAE Handbook: HVAC Applications.

Better is to overlap the expanding plumes and use just as much flow rate as necessary to ensure containment.

I previously had a 30” electric range with 30” builder grade hood - it was loud and useless. Remember hoods get louder as they push towards their max cfm.

I just did a 36” induction with I think a 800 or 1200 cfm 42” hood. Phenomenal. The cfm are probably oversized, but the advantage is that even on lowest 2 settings (out of 5) it sucks out everything and is still in the quiet zone.

All you need is a 36" hood that is 600 cfm. Easy to find and honestly 22" depth should be perfectly fine. If its under a cabinet for installation then a perfect hood for a low cost is the zephyr AK6536BS

Thanks!

We have a Modern Air 42" 1200 cfm hood over our 42" Lacanche range and it works perfectly well. We grill, stir fry and make lots of ethnic foods and have no smells in the house at all despite rarely using the hood on high. For our beach house, we just installed a 36" 600 cfm hood over a 36" induction cooktop. We haven't used it yet so I don't know if we made the right choice or not (we will do most of our high temp cooking on the outdoor grill). While it may be optimum to go wider, it hasn't been my experience that it's necessary.

We have a 36” induction top and a 36” Zephyr hood with a lot of cfm (goes up to 700 I think, but we rarely use it over 450. The capture seems more than adequate to me. I probably use the center burner the most, and rarely use the front burners for anything really messy or smelly. I know sometimes when I’m making something I think should be fragrant, I can’t smell it, then I go outside and “yeah! Pork and cmuni and chipotle, yum!”

We do have side cabinets. I agonized over it during the design phase, but decided to ignore the conventional wisdom that the hood MUST be 6” wider than the cooktop. It has worked fine for 3 years. We did get a somewhat deeper hood than average, though.