We see kitchens pursuing luxury design everywhere we look. They fill our Pinterest and Instagram feeds and are continually promoted on design sites such as Houzz, often with generic marble surfaces and eye-catching range cookers. True luxury, on the other hand, is far more elusive. For a definitive ultra-luxury kitchen design, your cooking environment needs to be utterly unique, rising above the rest.

For truly discernable luxury, you must think outside the box and consider the ways to make your kitchen a reflection of your personal story. Luxury cannot be defined by golden accents and blinding white worktops. Luxury design should seamlessly encompass elements of uniqueness, professionalism, personality and high-end technology.

At Extreme Design we are committed to delivering the essence of luxury in all of our projects, walking you through the process of luxury kitchen design from inception to installation, and beyond. This guide will give you an insight as to how you may achieve the luxury kitchen of your dreams.

Unique

The unique nature of your kitchen is one of the most important factors in achieving luxury. Much like a commissioned piece of art, exclusivity and incomparability are top of the list for those seeking a truly luxurious design.

While many people associate ultra-luxury kitchen design with either truly traditional or ultra-modern kitchen design, this does not have to be the case. Executed correctly and luxury can often fit perfectly into rustic, farmhouse, Scandinavian, or any other overarching style just as easily.

From the moment you step into a luxury kitchen, the unique feel of the room must be accentuated by the surroundings. Look to the worktop designs to capture the eye and activate the imagination. Consider eschewing the porous and easily stained Carrara marble that has come to define kitchen luxury in favour of more unique materials.

Luxury Kitchen Design Stone Backsplash

Semi-precious materials such as tiger’s eye, onyx or even petrified wood can make your surfaces explode with unique personality. These materials provide an enduring, attention-grabbing degree of sophisticated identity to your kitchen. Furthermore, many semi-precious kitchen materials are able to be backlit for an even more wondrous look that oozes luxury.

For a strikingly unique touch, you could also consider liquid metal either as a large statement feature such as the island back panel, or as a small detail such as the inlay of your shelving. With the flexibility to tailor the material to you with techniques such as embossing, texturing and moulding, the possibilities to create a unique finish in liquid metal are almost limitless.

Luxury Kitchen Shelving Design

Look at any kitchen with an ultra-luxury feel and you are likely to find a unique island design that creates a visual statement and takes centre stage within the space. However, when pursuing uniqueness in a luxury kitchen, ensure that it extends to the finer details just as much as it does to large statement pieces. Ensuring that you have unique, high-quality accents from leather inlays to door handles can make a great difference to the luxury element of your kitchen. Whether you opt for lavishly decorated taps and sinks from the likes of Mestre or install cabinet and drawer handles such as those offered by Joseph Giles or Buster + Punch for bespoke, understated class, it’s the little things that set apart a kitchen of true luxury.

Professional

Luxury should always be associated with high quality, professional products. Never sacrifice functionality for form. It’s all well and good to have a beautifully unique kitchen, but if it can’t handle the everyday lifestyle of an Extreme client, it can never be truly described as luxurious. Therefore, ensuring your kitchen is well-equipped to tackle just about everything at a professional level is the key to luxury design.

Gaggenau Luxury Kitchen Appliances

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then the oven is the heart of the kitchen. As such ensuring that your cooking, both in the oven and on the hob, can be performed at a professional level is key to bringing a luxury feel to the room. We recommend Gaggenau appliances to our clients; in some ways Gaggenau defines modern kitchen luxury, while also bringing a definite air of sophistication. However, if you’d rather embrace a more apparent professional kitchen look – and you feel like the Aga is simply overdone – consider range cookers from the likes of Wolf. These ranges are absolutely on top of the market, injecting extra luxury into the kitchen through their unique, bespoke designs.

Custom Made Luxury Kitchen Design With Wolf Appliances

Keeping fresh ingredients cool is, of course, of key importance in the kitchen. Therefore, as with cooking appliances, cooling appliances should be of excellent, professional quality. Fridges and freezers from companies such as Sub Zero are used in restaurants around the world thus giving your kitchen a real edge of professionalism. Sub Zero’s fridge-freezers are handmade works of art for the discerning chef, built to last a lifetime while fulfilling all of your cold storage needs.

To really accentuate professionalism in a luxury kitchen, you should ensure that you have myriad additional appliances alongside staples such as refrigerators, ovens and dishwashers. Dedicated wine storage, built in coffee machines and additions to current appliances such as bread ovens and warming drawers, are fast becoming the standard by which luxury kitchens are measured. Beyond this, think of the bigger picture when it comes to luxury professionalism. Zone out on your kitchen as if it were the workspace of a Michelin starred restaurant. Ensure that every single appliance in the kitchen has its own space and a purpose. Do this and you will be well on your way to perfecting luxury kitchen design.

Personal

This ties in closely with our first point regarding the unique feel of a luxury kitchen, however, there is some nuance between creating the unique and achieving the personal. Luxury is not merely the way your kitchen appears, but also the way it feels to use – there is simply nothing more luxurious than a kitchen that has been created exclusively for you.

When planning a luxury kitchen, engage with your designer to ensure that any cabinets and drawers are tailored to your precise specifications. Your kitchen should tell your story, so take charge and ensure that the kitchen speaks to you. This could mean anything, from dedicating more storage space to your favourite cookware to designing display cases for your art. Whatever the case, for true luxury you must ensure that your kitchen is designed to impeccably reflect your personal taste.

Achieving this requires a new level of relationship with your designer. A good designer should make you feel comfortable to explore new opportunities and possibilities. By creating a friendly, relaxed and inspiring atmosphere, your designer will provide the environment and framework to guide you to discover what you truly desire – being true to your personal tastes and preferences is the only way to create a truly personal and timeless design.

Extreme Designer With Client

Technological

Luxury kitchens should make every action that you take in the room a joy. From the meals you cook to the friends you socialise with, it’s simply not true luxury unless you enjoy every moment with ease. To ensure you have a luxuriously streamlined kitchen experience, we recommend that you utilise technology to its fullest extent.

This doesn’t mean buying ‘smart’ versions of everything from the waste bin to the dishwasher, but utilising modern technology to make using your kitchen easier and more pleasurable. Smart lighting systems are a wonderful way of giving your kitchen a technological boost. They allow you to preset lighting settings to create the perfect atmosphere for each occasion with the press of a button. Beyond lighting, smart technology works beautifully through services such as Cornflake that can link to your blinds, curtains and CCTV or even to heating control and energy management systems.

Smart technology is now even simpler thanks to voice-activated personal assistant devices such as the Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod. These devices allow you to control the majority of your smart devices with your voice, so you don’t even have to leave your cooking station. From dimming the lights to setting timers and alarms, voice control is a sublime way of getting the most from your smart kitchen and a true example of luxurious technology.

Although for most the idea of a fully connected home may seem like a concept from a movie, it’s very much a reality that will become true in the not too distant future. All luxury home brands, whether they create products for cooking, laundry or lighting, are integrating smart connected capabilities into their devices. Whilst there is still some time until these features become fully functional and genuinely useful, ensuring that your home purchases are ‘smart home ready’ is a consideration for many embarking on an extensive home project.

For further information on creating a luxury kitchen unique to your vision, get in touch with the Extreme Design team for a truly bespoke kitchen design service.