Adding a range hood to your kitchen is a great idea. Range hoods help keep your kitchen surfaces and air clean by quickly capturing the cooking grease and fumes in the air and sending it out of your home. If you’re looking for a range hood but aren’t sure what size to get, we can help. Keep reading to learn why your range hood should be wider than your cooktop and how properly sized range hoods can benefit your kitchen.

Better Coverage

A range hood wider than your cooktop provides better coverage of your cooking area. Even if you’re using the burners on the outside of your stove, a wider range hood will suck up any cooking grease, fumes, and carbon monoxide. As a result, the surfaces around your stove will remain clean. A smaller range hood that fits exactly over your cooktop won’t have enough space to gather all those fumes.

Less Energy

While you may think smaller range hoods use less energy, the opposite is true. Smaller range hoods use more energy to work as hard as larger range hoods and clean the air around your cooktop. This high energy usage can give them a shorter lifespan, which means you may end up paying more money twice. You’ll pay first for the extra energy usage and again for a replacement when the time comes.

Quicker Response

Since wider range hoods have more surface area, they respond faster to problems with smoke and fumes. All you have to do is turn them on, and they’ll clean the air around your stovetop as quickly as the speed you put them on allows. A smaller range hood, even at the highest setting, will take longer since it covers less surface area.

How Wide Should Your Range Hood Be?

Now that you know why a wide range hood is necessary and how it can benefit your kitchen, you need to know exactly how wide we mean. A good rule of thumb is to choose a range hood that’s 6 inches wider than your cooktop on both sides. That means if your cooktop is 24 inches wide, your range hood should be 36 inches wide to cover the 24 inches of cooktop space and 6 extra inches on each side. Going any smaller will mean you risk losing the benefits described above, and going any bigger can be cumbersome in your kitchen.

Your range hood should be wider than your cooktop because it provides better coverage, uses less energy, and responds quicker than a range hood of the same size or smaller. If you’re interested in bringing these benefits into your kitchen and looking for stove hoods for sale, ROBAM is happy to assist you in finding the right appliance for your home.