Kitchen rangehood options

If you are building a new home or renovating your kitchen, a rangehood is just one of the many things you’ll need to choose in the process. Not only do rangehoods remove smells and smoke from the air while you are cooking, they also take the heat out of steam and fats making cooking a far more pleasant experience for everyone.

According to Choice, rangehoods can be either ducted or recirculating:

• Ducted rangehoods remove odours, smoke and steam to the outside of the home.
• Recirculating rangehoods suck through a filter and then return the air to the room. They can be more expensive to run as the filters do need to be replaced regularly.

There are four main types of rangehoods to choose from, according to Choice:

• Fixed rangehoods - fixed models work better than retractable ones in both recirculating mode and ducted mode because they cover more of the cooking area. They also have a considerably larger filter area. The downside: a fixed rangehood may get in the way, especially if it's at head height.
• Retractable or slide-out rangehoods - retractable models have a fan and light that turn on as you slide them out manually. These are generally less efficient at venting steam because of their smaller steam collection area; this is especially the case in recirculating mode. The advantage: once you finish cooking, you can push them out of sight and out of the way.
• Canopy rangehoods - canopy models look like a freestanding flue. These include island rangehoods, which are installed above an island cooking area in the centre of the kitchen, and wall canopies which are installed against a wall. Canopies are popular, but they can be very expensive compared with the other systems available.
• Undermount rangehoods - an undermount rangehood is integrated into the kitchen cupboard. They are an increasingly popular choice; unobtrusive and hidden away. However, because they aren't necessarily covering the entire area of the cooktop, they may not work as well as, say, a canopy rangehood when extracting steam, depending on where your saucepan is located.

Rangehoods can vary in price from as little at $100 to over $5000.