Cooktop downdraft vent in IKEA kitchen - is that possible? Does anyone know?

Hello Henning,

so I tried to plan a cooktop with a downdraft extractor in our planned Ikea kitchen. Recirculation, to be exact!

Problems I encountered: The maximum width of a kitchen cabinet at Ikea is 80 cm, inside width 76.2 cm. Most cooktops with downdraft extractors like those from Neff require 78 cm inside! But in principle, it is doable; you have to remove the top 5 cm from one of the cabinet’s side walls, then the cooktop fits in with a slight visual imbalance. Bora Basic would fit exactly in a cabinet but is also almost the most expensive solution and the exhaust routing with Metod would be very complicated.

However, the cooktop costs you a lot of drawer space for the exhaust routing. Ideally 20 cm, but at least 12 cm with most providers. If you don’t want to blow it out at your feet (at the plinth) standing at the cooktop, you need a more or less thick exhaust pipe — 190 cm2 cross-section or more is common. And these take up a lot of space depending on where the air is allowed to exit (angles and adapters for cross-section changes to get into the plinth area or the crown). So either an island with 75 cm countertop depth with a 60 cm base cabinet and the exhaust runs behind the drawers. Or little space for drawers in the cooktop cabinet to lead the pipes downwards and place the exhaust routing in the plinth area; the plinth must then be about 10 cm high (instead of 7 cm as with Metod) for common plug systems, so the countertop comes 3 cm higher than usual!

The fan itself costs you about half of the 80 cm base cabinet depending on the system and since some cm are used from the neighboring cabinet, maybe a bit there too. That is the best usable cabinet space in the kitchen, an 80 cm cabinet directly at the cooktop... that’s really annoying, but unfortunately inherent to the system.

We will solve it now with a ceiling hood and not with a downdraft extractor. It then hangs from the ceiling and is therefore also not in the way. With a better ceiling hood like the Falmec Cielo, it looks more like an art object/light than a plain kitchen device.

Post your kitchen plan, maybe I still have another idea.

That must have meant a jump in the budget, though, right?

Good decision. Schüller is higher quality even with the cheapest fronts, also much more individual design is possible, and a recessed ventilation (clearly personal opinion) looks significantly nicer (if you want a kitchen island). Even "designer ceiling vents" always look terrible, I didn’t want something like that either, I would rather do without the kitchen island in doubt (and I say this as actually a strong IKEA fan... but IKEA is only moderately positioned when it comes to kitchens).