Sweating over a hot stove may have been the norm way back when, but today’s cooks can throttle back kitchen temperatures – if they match their cook tops to their kitchen and culinary habits.

It’s equally the norm for top-shelf kitchens to feature the biggest and baddest of mega-BTU (British thermal unit) behemoths. Often the stoves are commercial-grade gas models with enough combustion to prepare presidential banquets. But it’s like igniting a blast furnace to brown a grilled-cheese sandwich.

Pick the wrong stove and you may do a slow boil over your selection. The key factors are the size of your kitchen and your ability to externally vent smoke and excess heat. Cooking styles matter, too. Unfortunately, most culinarians go gaga over all the bells and whistles, including multiburner firepower.

“Most people start with aesthetics, and the impact on their home is never really considered,” says Bob Lewis of Dacor, a maker of high-end gas, induction and electric cooktops.

Top-of-the-line stoves crank out a hefty 18,000 BTUs. That’s great to flash-sear steaks, but such power is over the top for most daily food prep like boiling water or reheating leftovers. According to Paul Leuthe of stovemaker Wolf, it’s common for homeowners to have more BTUs than they actually need. “If you want to sear something quickly, you do need the horsepower,” Leuthe says. “It’s nice to have it, but do you need it every day? No.”

Cooktop manufacturers say homeowners give up nothing stylish if they opt for less powerful stoves. Stainless steel is very popular, but porcelain and other materials are very much in style, too.

Of chief concern to homeowners should be ventilation. Fumes and heat can accumulate quickly, and with today’s well-sealed homes, a kitchen with poor ventilation can cause heat buildup and carbon monoxide poisoning – all the more reason to keep carbon monoxide detectors around the house. Homeowners should also consider stoves that don’t overwhelm spaces without adequate ventilation.

Wolf’s Leuthe says many vents aren’t equipped to handle the output of heat. What matters is how much energy reaches the pan.

Home chefs covet natural gas, but gas stoves convert a mere 50 percent of heat into useable energy. The remainder, as heat, disperses into thin air.

Other stoves are much more efficient, albeit without the elan of cooking with gas. Electric cooktops deliver 80 percent of energy to the cooking surface, while induction stoves are 90 percent efficient.

In fact, induction stoves are the new darlings of high-end kitchens. Dacor’s Lewis predicts “induction will rival gas in terms of how easy it is to control and how fast it heats. All the heat from induction is concentrated on the pan.”

For now, gas is the fuel of choice among budding chefs. Most kitchens are built to accommodate stove widths of between 30 inches and 36 inches. If your space is small, consider a stovetop with one large, 4-inch-diameter burner and three smaller 2 1/2-inch burners with heat output of 9,500 BTUs or less, a great size for simmering at 650 BTUs or less.

Also worth a look are two burner stovetops. It’s important to keep the flame’s diameter directly beneath the pan. If flames spill out beyond the edge of your pan, you’re wasting fuel. Fit the size of your pan to size of the burner for optimum cooking performance.

There’s also the matter of how many people you’re cooking for and what they’re eating. Small households may not need high-output stoves for day-in, day-out cooking. But if your creative skills happen to fall short of five-star restaurant standards, you won’t need to spend the extra dough on the SUV of cook tops.