Essential Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom – June 2019

Go big or go home… Or, in the case of this month’s stunning real-life kitchens, go big AN D go home! Our theme this issue is how to best treat larger rooms – paradoxically, they can actually be more difficult to work with compared with less generous floorplans when it comes to a new kitchen. Luckily, we’ve been showered with some amazing advice from the pros-in-the-know, which will ensure you make the best use of your space. One aspect which often features heavily in larger kitchen designs (and even in more compact ones) is the island. With endless options available in terms of functionality, size and materials, we’ve filled our specialist feature on page 66 with masses of design inspiration and practical solutions to make yours the Centre of Attention. In our larger-than-life real kitchens, islands are a common feature as you’d probably expect, but there are so many different aspects to planning a large space which you may not have previously considered. Orley Kutner’s kitchen, A Kitchen For Life, page 24, is a truly multifunctional arena, designed for both family life and also serious entertaining – the already impressive footprint was made to feel even bigger thanks to floor-to-ceiling glazing which leads onto the beautiful garden. In Breathing Space on page 36, Victoria and Anthony Herbert weren’t content with ‘just’ opening up three rooms to create their generous American-style kitchen – they also dug down into the basement to install a spiral wine cellar for the ultimate wow factor. Also inspired by life in the USA , it was American-sized appliances which dictated the layout of Lizzie and Matt Samuel’s monochromatic hub. To provide the floorplan they required, they bought two flats within one building and combined them into one, resulting in a spacious dining-cooking-living area – flick to A Kitchen of Contrasts on page 48.