New 2024
New 2024
New 2024
The kitchen really is the heart of the home, so it’s important to create a welcoming and homely environment where you love to spend time cooking, socialising, and eating with friends and family. But, with so many different colours and designs to choose from, it can be difficult to know exactly what you want.
That’s where we’re here to help. The best fitted kitchens are designed according to a consistent style, with all cabinets, appliances, and worktops following the same design scheme. Often, bulky appliances will even be integrated or hidden to give a clean finish throughout. This guide outlines all you need to know to buy a fitted kitchen, including the factors you need to consider, the styles and finishes on offer, and how to pick the perfect layout.
Before you’re able to start choosing your dream fitted kitchen, you should spend time working out your available space and budget. This is to ensure your plans don’t exceed capacity, on both counts.
Fitted kitchens are sleek and stylish, and each fixture is installed with purpose and precision to offer a flush and consistent finish that complements your design scheme.
With this in mind, it’s important to accurately measure your available space, from floorplan to wall size. This will allow you to map out your potential layout and determine how much flooring you’ll need, figure out whether you’ll require tall tower units to maximise room, and plan where to position your fridge, freezer, cooker and dishwasher for practical use.
Measuring your entire kitchen can cause confusion, if you’ve never done it before, so we offer a handy home measurement service to take the weight off your shoulders.
It’s important to take your budget into account throughout the planning stage, as it will likely guide many of your decisions when you buy fitted kitchen features. Think about how much you can reasonably afford to spend on fixtures and cabinetry, flooring, and appliances, as well as areas you might be able to save. For instance, you might want authentic oak flooring, but decide that laminate or vinyl will offer the same style at a cheaper rate.
The cost of a fully fitted kitchen varies, depending on your layout and the complexity of work required, your choice of materials, and the colour palette you require to achieve the look you want. However, at Stails, we don’t believe you should ever have to compromise on style, even if you dream kitchen at first seems a little over budget.
To make a gorgeous new fitted kitchen accessible for everything, we offer three categories that increase in cost as they become more bespoke. Our range starts with the Vogue flat pack collection, which makes even the chicest kitchens an affordable luxury, followed by our factory-built Infinity range and exclusive Infinity Plus kitchens that allow you to combine almost any colours, materials, and finishes you can think of.
We all have our own sense of style, especially when choosing features for the home and kitchen. Take inspiration from the three most common design schemes, traditional, modern, and shaker, when coming up with your own fitted kitchen ideas.
Traditional fitted kitchens offer classic charm, combining homely features with a warm and welcoming colour palette, and placing a strong emphasis on natural tones and materials. Think rugged wooden beams and cabinetry, rich stone worktops, and gorgeously patterned backsplashes. Or for something bursting with character; rustic taps and copper lighting work a treat when styled as part of a vintage theme.
But that doesn’t mean that a traditional kitchen can’t keep up with the times; consider integrated appliances hidden behind stylish panels that ensure your bold contemporary tech doesn’t disrupt your classic design scheme.
There’s no set blueprint for designing the perfect modern kitchen, with personal taste the most important factor to consider in the planning process. However, as a general rule, this style often adheres to simplicity, sleek minimalism, and clean lines.
A particularly great benefit of this modern design scheme is that, as smart kitchens become increasingly prominent, the simple layout will complement your evolving space. But don’t feel like you need to think futuristically at every turn; instead, take the modern features you enjoy and blend with your own character.
A shaker-style space is centred around practicality, making it the fitted kitchen of choice for anyone who prioritises a functional layout, accessible appliances, and gorgeous simplicity. Timelessly clean, a shaker kitchen promotes a light and welcoming feel and effortless maintenance.
It’s this versatility that offers you so many avenues to follow when styling your space. Whether you favour a matt or glossy finish, you’ll find a shaker kitchen suits a broad array of features, colours, and materials.
When deliberating fitted kitchen designs, it’s important to consider your cabinet hardware, which, while subtle, can really make or break your look.
Pull handles are named literally and serve the exact purpose they suggest; they are used via a straightforward pulling motion when you want to open your kitchen cabinets and drawers. They’re particularly practical for heavy or tall doors that require a little leverage, and make it easier to open drawers, which don’t naturally support a twisting action.
Aesthetically, choose from bar, cup, and arch designs, available in an array of versatile shapes, sizes, and materials, to find the style that perfectly suits your classic or contemporary finish. And it’s good news if you’re not particularly DIY savvy, as installation simply involves screwing your handle directly into your cabinet’s front panel.
Before you can order your fitted kitchen, you’ll need to make a few final considerations: your colour combinations, the shape of your units, and the finish of your worktops.
Your colour choices are crucial when adding the finishing touches to your fitted kitchen; certain combinations can really elevate your style, while some can act against you. As a rule of thumb, however, monochromatic blacks, whites, and greys are often found in contemporary kitchens that favour sleek simplicity, while natural creams, greens, and autumnal browns work well alongside wooden features in a traditional space.
If you’re looking to inject personality, timeless two-tone against a crisp white backdrop is always a strong option, no matter the design scheme, whether you prefer popping pastels or soft pinks and blues.
