Once purely a functional space and relegated to basements or back rooms, the kitchen has steadily been getting more and more decorated over the last few decades. Colour has arrived in force, the open-plan kitchen has acquired living spaces with comfortable sofas and dining areas fit for guests. But have kitchens ever really been playful spaces? Do drama, whimsy and wit enter here as they might do in sitting rooms and bedrooms? Well, it appears they're on the threshold.
A rather charming trend that's been popping up in the pages of House & Garden in recent months is the be-turreted kitchen, where castle, palace and temple-like ornamentation trims the cabinets. It's a very fun and fresh idea, whether you go for affordable DIY castellations, as per Max Hurd's house, designed by Benedict Foley, above, or the full bespoke Austrian palace look, as Rachel Chudley did below. Turns out an English designer’s kitchen is their castle.
For a slightly more classical take on the look, try a pediment in the style of an ancient Greek temple on your cabinets. Sarah Corbett-Winder has installed them all over her London house, including on the door frames, but we rather like the bespoke pair of dressers, one cream, one aubergine, facing each other across her kitchen (below). Painting them in gloss paint with an almost mirrored finish makes them extra dramatic.
Likewise, although her house is a good 6,000+ miles away in the state of Utah, Meta Coleman has also taken inspiration from ancient Greece in the bright blue Gustavian/Biedermeier armoire that stands in the corner of her otherwise alpine-neutral kitchen (below). Meta designed the cupboard herself, which boasts rounded finials either side of a classically inclined triangular pediment much like those found on the Greek and Roman temples that pepper the shores of the Mediterranean, epitomising the half-German Meta’s European design ideals and heritage.
Alongside the classical and the crenellated, some creative designers have leaned into kitchen designs whose whimsy would make them at home in a Gothic pile, all crockets and spikes and monumental shapes. In Martin Brudnizki’s 17th-century Sussex flat, tall cabinets in each of the four corners of the room disguise the fridge-freezer, washer and dryer underneath dramatic finials with a flair for the exuberant that is typical of Brudnizki’s work. Add in a marble splashback and an orange wall to contrast the avocado-green joinery, and the result is surprising and fantastical.
It’s not difficult to ask a local joiner to create a custom shape for your kitchen – that’s exactly what Phoebe Clive did in the Herefordshire kitchen below, to a design of Phoebe’s own based on an Eastern European look. The pediment is painted in “Invisible Green” by Edward Bulmer, while the sink curtain is in an Indian block-print cotton sold at Tinsmiths, the shop owned by Phoebe. Under the cupboard units, the elaborate motif is continued in the joinery.
While it’s certainly the case that these kitchens have had some bespoke design work go into them, it is possible to get the turreted look on a budget. A simple castellated detail is not impossible to make yourself from MDF and paint to match your cabinets, and one of our favourite semi-bespoke design companies, Jali, offers various trims in 600mm lengths, as well as the option of designing your own MDF shapes and having them made. Now all you need to do is decide between ancient temples, medieval castles, or Baroque palaces for your inspiration.
