I hate them all.

But i do applaud the first one for thinking out of the box.

Thanks for sharing. But I think they are absolutely horrible.
It is hard to imagine anything this trendy catching on as a permanent fixture.
But we'll see....

I quite liked the Harvey Jones shaker kitchen and I like the house of frasier's colors too. They are out of the box but my husband is english and we frequently visit friends and relatives in the uk and even the brand new kitchens look nothing like these projected trends in real middle class homes I have seen. I love to go into kitchen shops when ever we are shopping in a village and in the show rooms this sept. I saw nothing resembling these kitchens. But time will tell if it does indeed creep into real life. One thing that rings true is how small their appliances are even in the section about "large" appliances the american version fridge is still quite small for US families.

I love them! But then, my hubby is Dutch so I've embraced Euro design. We love to tour the kitchen showrooms in Holland, too. My in-laws renovated their kitchen 15 years ago, and it looks like something out of a modern design magazine of today. So fun to see, but it sure would hard to live with the smaller appliances.

I like the idea of the cascading drawers in Kitchen #1 but I'd bang my hip on the counter bumpout every time I walked by. Really don't like those curvy panels on the uppers either. I like the wood in #2 but it looks so forced, so "look at me" in that application. I think it'd look great on a dining room table, though. #3 is not my style at all - I'd have an uncontrollable urge to make sunny-side-up eggs every time I walked in.

I actually prefer the curves to the cascading drawers. The curves are just there to add interest and don't really get in the way of anything. But the drawers immediately struck me as impractical - not just for the hip bumping issue, but I imagined quite a bit of difficulty reaching the back of the bottom drawer. I didn't like #2, but the more I looked at it, I don't think it was the pine as much as the pine combined with all that bright blue. I found the backsplash quite jarring next to the natural look of the wood. #3 looked like a typical modern euro kitchen to me, didn't really see what the big news was there.

In the first one, I don't see how curvy protrusions, like fins on a 50s car, are balanced by a boxy protrusion.

In the second one, I see three different shades of blue. And you mean to tell me that those were the best tiles they could find? They say nothing. The wood cabs are interesting, but paired with the wrong glass. Should be greenish in hue w some bubbles. This looks like a hobbit got a job at Herman Miller.

And I have to comment on photo 2 staging. It consists of a bad watercolor from a charity art fair, an offering from a Stop and Shop floral department, and a dorm room microwave. And this is for a photo shoot.

ps ok Sainsburys, not Stop and Shop

This looks like a hobbit got a job at Herman Miller

LOL !!

I have never seen anything like these kitchens in England. Of cource there are exceptions to the average kitchen size over there but mostly you would not see anything close to the sf in the photos.

So I was thinking about the lack of sg in real English kitchens and maybe that is what is meant to be appealing to the Eglish clientele...the feeling of expanse. There is not a lot of open floor plans over there, most houses have a series of smaller rooms. In general there also seems to me more do dads clutter in the smaller rooms.

I really love the color combos in #1

Kitchen 1 would be beautiful (although maybe a little boring) with a better countertop and minus the cascading drawers. I don't see how the curved open shelving relates to anything else so I'd skip that too. I don't care for the others at all. They wanted the cabinets to stand out, and they succeeded in that, but as far as creating a pleasing kitchen, I'd say "Fail!"

Fun to look at, but that's all. Hard to explain, but my favorite kitchens are great places to be and work in and, no matter how good looking, their aesthetic message is that function. Cooking, being a cook, enjoying food, door to herb garden, etc. In-the-face bling details that overwhelm that message leave me cold.

I love the colors in #1 but not the fins and not the drawers.
In kitchen #2 the glass is wrong but I love the use of the live edge wood. I can see that as something that would go over around me big time. One of the posters on the Cooking Forum is making beautiful live edge cutting boards. I'll place a link below.
I do like the curves in #3 but can't stand the yellow.

Here is a link that might be useful: Thibeault's Table Cutting Boards

I like #1 because of color. I like light and white kitchen because they look clean sterile even because my idea of where food is cooked should be sterile.

I like the first one but the cascading drawers did not need to be a different color than the adjacent ones.
I did not care for the harsh colors in the 2nd and 3rd ones. I can understand trying for cheerful but they went too far in saturation for the blue and yellow. The layout in #3 is good.

Well, I like the hobbit-feel of the second kitchen...and the blue range. The backsplash and floor tiles don't look very 'hobbit', though :)

That being said, it's not something I'd put in my kitchen, but that range is beautiful and I could see a little of that wood, maybe on the island...without the clear plastic accents.

I really don't think the blogger picked the best examples, but there are definitely trends in England that are very different than here. I regularly pick up the British kitchen/bath design mags, and it is interesting just *how* different they are. Color, especially deep jewel tones (like eggplant) and pastels, is definitely big; often, more than one color will be mixed, like the trend here for dark islands with white cabinets, but with two colors instead. Drawer-fronts that are a different color/material are popular, especially polished wood in painted or laminate cabs. I have also seen quite a few kitchens with built-in pullout wood breadboards. Labelling drawers and boards seems oddly popular. Laminate cabinetry is much, much more popular than here, as are corian counters. American walnut seems to be the hot wood to use, if you go wood. Rounded counters, semi-circular counters and islands/peninsulas, and rounded-front drawers are all very, very populat. Also, very large (like doorknob big) wood knobs. Finally, there still seems to be a bit of prestige in having an "American-style" refrigerator, and Viking seems to be getting a lot of exposure in higher-end kitchens...I get the sense that having a Viking there has a rarity factor similar to having an AGA here, and thus appeals on that basis.

Remember, though...the kitchens in the mags and on design blogs have little to do with the average actual british kitchen....as here, most people live with old kitchens, or renovate them on a budget rather than going "bespoke."

I agree with jsceva, these kitchens aren't particularly interesting to me, but generally I find that most of the UK kitchens portrayed in blogs and magazines are more interesting than most I see in North American mags. Check out the link below and the various 'kitchens" this company makes. I think many will appeal to a quite broad North American audience, but they are still a little distinct. I quite like Osea "bespoke" kitchens.

Here is a link that might be useful: English kitchens

There are bits and pieces of each that I like, but as a whole - no.

At the time we were building, there was a locally owned home store that shipped furniture from England (also custom pieces) to Alabama. The owner of the store started doing a few kitchens. He ended up going under - bad management and horrible time management. But before he closed, I was able to order my kitchen pieces from his furniture maker in England (Geoff Chater - he used to have a website, but I can't find now).

Anyway, I designed the island from two different English magazine ads (another GW post on - ideas to kitchen ) so each piece is actually furniture quality with finished sides and back. They could technically stand alone. The island is one piece, plus the top. I've told DH the island is going with me if we ever move. ;D

The pieces are mostly pine. The antique pine top was purchased here and the hood was custom, also made here. Several pieces were ordered with the English knobs. The sink is a fireclay V&B from England (drainage holes are different than American V&B sinks. While the chicken wire was installed in England, the copper plate rack pieces I bought at Lowe's.

If I had the time and energy during construction, I would have sought out furniture and done a more true unfitted kitchen. But I was pushing it as it was - sink wasn't hooked up for two days after moving in sink the container was held up in custom for several days.

While it doesn't look exactly like a true English kitchen online or in the English magazines, it turned out great and we love it.

Here is a link that might be useful: my kitchen

I'll take the Clive Christian English kitchen, now that's my ideal of an English kitchen. In my dreams!

Kitchen 1 would be beautiful (although maybe a little boring) with a better countertop and minus the cascading drawers. I don't see how the curved open shelving relates to anything else so I'd skip that too. I don't care for the others at all. They wanted the cabinets to stand out, and they succeeded in that, but as far as creating a pleasing kitchen, I'd say "Fail!"

I would like kitchen 1 (at least the curved shelves) if they were vintage from the 1940's or 1950's. But new ... it seems forced and unrelated to the rest of the room. Maybe if the windows were curved?

I feel conflicted because I WANT to like it, I just don't.

I like the color scheme of the first one and the cascading drawers don't bother me, but I would probably do a run of those as something separate. I think the curves on the upper would be in the way.

#3 is ok except for the yellow. I would choose a different color

I don't get #2, the color scheme or the hobbity thing, unless it was in a very organic house.

Sochi - most of those kitchens have shaker style cabs. I don't see much that is different from here if you look at custom kitchens in the US...

Remember.

UGLY IS THE NEW BEAUTIFUL.

I agree dianalo, that is why I posted them. I thought they would be appreciated here. But they do seem to stand apart (just a bit) from the typical NA white shaker kitchen somehow, I'm not exactly sure how. Use of colour perhaps? Less stone counters, more wood? Not quite as 'polished'? More subdued? They are a bit too traditional for me, but I do like most of them, particularly the Osea line. I'm hoping to build a small cottage/cabin on a lake over the next couple of years, I'd love something like that Osea line. Seemingly rustic and modern at the same time?

I really love unfitted European kitchens (not reflected in the link I posted). I hope NA starts to go that way, even just a bit.

I do not like any of these kitchens but it was fun to look at. Thanks for sharing.

I've been playing a lot of British TV shows (fiction)--though I do seem to look at them long enough to see the kitchens. I don't know what's happening in British design circles, or what people are putting in IRL, but the kitchens of the middle classes in the TV shows are very similar to the kinds of kitchens we've been making here. Either there's a lot of under-reported crossover (people do tend to notice the differences more than the similarities, often enough), or the set designers there are highly influenced by our magazines and/or GW.

To the point, painted Shaker-style cabinets, stone counters, what we call "farmhouse" sinks, bin pulls, islands, bridge faucets and goosenecks. Yes, there are Aga cookers in some. Not nearly the quantity of stainless. Overall, nothing foreign, however. :)

OP here. I have been following the blog of that magazine since I began my own remodel and it is definitely fun and interesting to see the appliances, accessories and materials they are featuring (usually VERY colorful). I agree that it is most likely for a certain clientele and not England as a whole! I lived in two homes there (albeit 25 years ago) and the kitchens were charming but very utilitarian and not very "pretty". Though we did have a lovely green AGA in one of them...

Here is another link to a recent kitchen remodel of a Beautiful Kitchens employee to compare to the three posted above:

Here is a link that might be useful: Pics of

I love the Plain English kitchens that Sochi posted a link to and find them a bit different from U.S. custom kitchens. I think it is the low toekick and the absent bottom molding where there is no toekick. I don't think I've seen kitchens like that here before. Most toekicks are 4" and if there is no toekick there is molding applied. Also each cabinet has a separate frame that comes down all the way to the floor to make the leg (sorry I'm not up on the terminology to properly describe that). I really like them! They are classic and a bit rustic at the same time.

Not sure I would grow to like the metal bar sides in the last kitchen posted by Honeychurch, not to mention 'walnut look, sticky backed plastic', though it looks like the real deal in the photos.