Next125 Crystal White Kitchen in Guisborough

A next125 kitchen in Guisborough

A full kitchen for a Guisborough home, built around one idea: a single island that does two jobs. The main run is a built-up island, and a second, lower table island comes off it in a tee — so preparation and eating happen at the same piece of furniture, at two different heights, without a separate dining table taking up the floor.

Crystal white, with black drawn through it

The kitchen is next125 in glass matt crystal white — a glass front rather than a lacquer, which holds its finish and reflects light rather than absorbing it. It runs the full height of the room on both walls, unbroken.

Nothing protrudes. Every door and drawer opens on a grip ledge rather than a handle, and the ledges are colour-matched: crystal white on the white runs, and onyx black where the black is wanted — including two full-height black C-profile ledges that cut the tall run from floor to ceiling. That is the whole trick of the room. There is no black cabinetry to speak of; the black is a line, not a mass.

Laminam Invisible White

The worktops are Laminam Invisible White, carried across the built-up island and the table island that runs off it.

It is a porcelain surface rather than a stone, so the veining runs through a material that will not stain or etch — which matters on an island that is a worktop at one end and a dining table at the other.

Black, repeated

A matt black Quooker tap over a black Schock sink. Onyx black grip ledges. AEG’s matt black combination oven and matt black bean-to-cup coffee machine. The induction hob and the retracted downdraft, both black, set into a white worktop.

None of that is a coincidence. In a kitchen this pale, one black object reads as an accident and six read as a scheme — so the black was specified across the tap, the sink, the ledges and the appliances together, and the white is what makes it land.

A downdraft that disappears

Extraction is a Novy Panorama, 120cm, set into the worktop. It rises when it is needed and retracts flush when it is not.

That is the reason there is nothing above the island. In an open kitchen, a hood hanging over the centre of the room is the one element that cannot be designed away — so here it was designed downwards instead. The sightline across the kitchen, and along the table island, stays clear.

The appliances

Two AEG SenseCook pyrolytic ovens, a connected matt black combination oven and microwave, and a matt black bean-to-cup coffee machine, built into a single column.

Alongside them, an in-column food centre and a separate in-column frost-free freezer, a warming drawer, and a fully integrated ProClean dishwasher. Two LED-illuminated wall shelves light the run. All of it built in, so the appliances read as part of the cabinetry rather than as objects placed in a room.

One floor, throughout

Graniti Fiandre tiles, 1500 × 1000, run through the whole of the downstairs — not just the kitchen.

It is the same decision that makes any open plan work: one uninterrupted floor, so the eye reads a single space instead of a series of rooms with thresholds between them.