While our love affair with the designer kitchen continues, some of the heat is gone. Intense focus on the cooking space has increased since the knock-through 1990s, when the kitchen developed territorial ambitions and started to invade adjacent rooms, but now the recession is cooling our ardour, forcing the kitchen designers to take stock.
The fashion this year is for “trend-proof” kitchens in subtle colours (mouse greys, slate greys and dirty pastels, with bright colour confined inside the cupboards) that will see us into the next boom time, whenever that may be. Best of all, a handful of makers are thinking the unthinkable: designer kitchens should be less expensive. So this year marks a shift to the low-key and — if you’re lucky — reduced-cost designer kitchen.
Launched this weekend at the Ideal Home Show, the landmark kitchen of 2012 is by Plain English, with joinery inspired by early-Georgian cupboards. The company’s creative director, Katie Fontana, has designed a kitchen that can be sold at a fifth of the cost of its usual range. For £7,000-£8,000, you can buy British Standard by Plain English, made by hand in its Suffolk workshop (01449 774028, plainenglishdesign.co.uk).
The fact is, these days, most of the people who would love to commission a creative, inspiring kitchen aren’t able to throw much cash at the project. “Everyone’s wondering how to respond to the lack of money in the middle of the market,” says Johnny Grey, the originator of the “unfitted kitchen”. His sculptural statement spaces often cost upwards of £75,000, but he now provides a “design only” proposal for £7,000-£10,000.
Advertisement
“You have a design you can implement over a period of time,” he says. “That’s what I did when we moved into our house in 1991 — there was a recession on, so we did the kitchen over a few years.”
The piecemeal approach — keeping an old dresser and adding a smart new island, say — is one interior designers have been offering clients for years. The result is more laid-back and liveable than a box-fresh interior. Another favoured device for a sleek, contemporary but economical design is mixing Ikea’s Faktum kitchen in Abstrakt white with a bespoke island or top-flight appliances. If you need to keep your budget below the £5,000 mark, the Swedish giant is still a leader for low-cost style.
Less well known, but well worth checking out, is the British company Wren (wrenkitchens.com). Its products come fully assembled — not a flat pack in sight — and are made in the UK, with prices well below £2,000. You don’t get solid wood for that, but you benefit from thoughtful design: space-saving features such as “magic corners”, extra-deep wall cabinets to fit full-size dinner plates and wall-unit brackets that hold up to 250kg. Steer clear of the “modern” models and choose something classic — the Sterne, for example.
Advertisement
And if you can stretch to an extra nought? The most indulgent kitchens this year are a delight to the hand, incorporating deliciously tactile materials. The Twenty Cemento (first picture in slideshow) is coated with liquid cement, Schiffini’s Cinqueterre is the first all-aluminium kitchen, and the same firm’s Mesa design has a black, knobbly rubber-effect finish (both from £25,000; designspacelondon.com).
The wow factor is in the details in this year’s designer kitchens, whether they be the quadrant panel mouldings, tongue-and-groove-backed shelves and pillow-fronted drawers of Plain English, or the glorious ribbed surfaces of the anodised black aluminium doors of the Cinqueterre. Our feelings may be cooling towards the statement kitchen, but these details may be enough to seduce us anew.
Top tip
Mix elements of fitted and unfitted kitchens for a timeless, informal look. Dial back the colour and shine to create a serene interior of greyed tones and pleasing textures. For an up-to-the-minute touch, add hot hues inside your cupboards