How to Make a Kitchen in RimWorld That Stays Clean, Fast, and Cold | 1.6 Tool
Build a Kitchen That Stays Clean, Fast, and Cold
Plug in the cleanliness number from your room stats, the room role at your stove, and your freezer size. This tool tells you whether dirty-room food poisoning is still live, whether the stove is eating a room-role penalty, and how much power your kitchen block is asking for before the next heat wave.
Quick Setup That Works
- Keep the cooking room at -2 cleanliness or better.
- Put the butcher spot or butcher table next door, not in the cook room.
- Use a side freezer with a two-door airlock; do not route traffic through it.
- Set the freezer to -2C to -10C so door swings have buffer.
- Use straw matting in traffic lanes, then upgrade stove tiles to sterile later.
Kitchen Planner
Use the in-game room cleanliness stat, then size the freezer and room role around it.
Inputs
Food Safety
Stable
Your current setup keeps the dirty-room roll under control.
Stove Speed
Full speed
The stove is in the right room role and keeps its full work speed.
Power Draw
800W
Two coolers and one autodoor are a normal mid-game kitchen load.
Blueprint
7×9 kitchen + 6×8 freezer
Two stoves, side airlock, and shelves behind the cook spots.
Fix First
Do the first two changes before you spend on beauty or extra benches.
- Keep room cleanliness above -2.
- Keep the stove in a real kitchen.
- Do not path the colony through the freezer.
Layouts That Scale
Pick the footprint by eater count, then keep the walking loop short.
5 Pawns
Kitchen: 5×7. Freezer: 5×6. One stove is enough if the freezer sits on the side rather than on the main hallway.
- 1 stove, 1 cooler, 2 small shelves.
- Manual door is fine early; airlock is optional.
- Straw matting at the entry pays for itself fast.
12 Pawns
Kitchen: 7×9. Freezer: 6×8. This is the point where two stoves and a real airlock start feeling mandatory.
- 2 stoves, 2 coolers, 4 small shelves.
- Keep a straight line from shelves to stove to freezer door.
- Butchery should be one room away, not one tile away.
20+ Pawns
Kitchen: 9×11. Freezer: 8×10. Large kitchens win on flow, not on squeezing more workstations into one room.
- 3 stoves or 2 stoves plus paste backup.
- 3 to 4 coolers, 1 to 2 autodoor transitions.
- Use shelf-fed ingredients so cooks stop touring the base.
Rules That Matter
These are the kitchen rules that actually change outcomes in play.
Stay Above -2 Cleanliness
The dirty-room food poisoning curve drops to zero once the room reaches -2 cleanliness. That is the real early-game target, not full sterile coverage.
- Straw matting: -0.1 cleanliness, but only 5% normal organic filth sticks.
- Steel tile: +0.2 cleanliness and faster cleaning.
- Sterile tile: +0.6 cleanliness and the biggest safety buffer.
- Butcher table: -15 cleanliness. Never leave it in the cook room.
Freezers Fail on Traffic
Coolers are simple: 200W each, -21 energy per second. Freezers usually fail because doors keep cycling, not because one more wall layer was missing.
- Use a two-door airlock or a side entrance, not a hallway shortcut.
- Set the target between -2C and -10C so door swings do not push food above freezing.
- Autodoors cost 50W each; use them on the kitchen side, not on every tile of the route.
- Passive coolers are explicitly not strong enough for refrigeration.
| Floor | Cleanliness | Cost | Best use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straw matting | -0.1, filth multiplier 0.05 | 2 hay | Door thresholds, freezer approach, cook traffic lanes. |
| Concrete / paved tile | 0 | 1 to 2 steel | Cheap early indoor floor when you only need a stable base. |
| Stone tile / flagstone | 0 | 4 blocks | Good mid-game floor if steel is tight and you want fire safety. |
| Steel tile | +0.2 | 7 steel | Good under the stove when sterile is still too expensive. |
| Sterile tile | +0.6 | 3 steel + 12 silver | Late-game cook tiles, hospitals, and labs. |
Room role matters in 1.6. Stoves and research benches both use a 0.8 not-in-room-role factor. If your stove shares space with research benches and the room flips to Laboratory, cooking gets slower even when the room is clean.
Bills and Traffic
Most kitchen slowdown is walking, hauling, or cleaning at the wrong time.
Meal Bills That Stay Fed
Simple meals Do until you have: 12 Pause when satisfied: 16 Unpause at: 6 Ingredient radius: 8 tiles Take to best stockpile: Off if the cook keeps hauling Drop on floor: On if a hauler or shelf is one tile away Fine meals Do until you have: 8 Pause when satisfied: 10 Unpause at: 4 Keep meat and veg on separate shelves behind the cook
Zones and Access
Allowed zone: Kitchen Staff - Cooks - Cleaners - Haulers that restock ingredient shelves Keep out - Animals - General traffic - Patients and prisoners - Main base hallway pathing through the freezer
Shelves are excellent kitchen furniture. A shelf cell stores 3 items, ignores stored-item beauty, and starts at Preferred priority. Use small shelves for meat and veg right behind the interaction cells so the cook does not keep stepping back into the freezer.
Fueled vs electric stoves: an electric stove pulls 350W; a fueled stove uses wood only when used. If your grid is weak but you already have wood flow, a fueled stove plus a powered freezer is a clean early split.
RimWorld 1.6.4633 Values
These are the hard numbers this page uses.
Cleanliness breakpoint
The dirty-room food poisoning curve reaches 0 once the room hits -2 cleanliness.
Wrong room role factor
Electric and fueled stoves both use the not-in-room-role factor when the room is not a Kitchen.
Cooler draw
One cooler costs 200W and applies -21 energy per second of cooling.
Autodoor draw
Autodoors are great on busy transitions, but they still count against your freezer block.
Butcher table cleanliness
This single object can wipe out a clean kitchen by itself if you leave it in the cook room.
Sterile tile cleanliness
Sterile tile is the biggest kitchen floor cleanliness boost in the core game.
Straw filth multiplier
Straw matting only keeps 5% of ordinary organic filth, which is why it works so well in traffic lanes.
Cook skill floor
Cooking skill 9 and above bottoms out at a 0.1% cook skill poison chance per meal.
| Input | Result used here | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Cleanliness -5 / -3.5 / -2 | Dirty-room poison roll = 5% / 2.5% / 0% | That is the exact room curve the planner uses. |
| Cooking skill 0 / 4 / 6 / 9+ | 5% / 1.5% / 0.5% / 0.1% | Even in a clean room, bad cooks can still poison meals. |
| Outdoors cooking | 2% roomless poison chance | Roof the stove if you want the room roll to go away. |
| Simple research bench in kitchen | Laboratory role demand + 0.8× mismatch penalty | Mixed kitchen-lab rooms cost speed on the minority bench. |