The kitchen occupies a room with a beautiful vaulted ceiling, and the ambition from the first conversation was to make it the absolute heart of the home. The original hope had been a kitchen-diner, but a site visit from our Director, Tim, put the design on a slightly different path — the room was large, but not large enough for both an impressive kitchen and an impressive dining room. So the dining table moved into the adjacent room, and the space was given entirely to the kitchen.

Two anchors set the layout. The island was sized to take a full slab of stone with no join, and sits at the centre of the room with everything else built around it. The Heritage Range Grand in pistachio was built specifically for this project and positioned in the middle of the long wall run. A bespoke mantle was built in situ around it, with discreet cut-outs for salt, oil and the everyday things that need to live close to the cooker, and a larder completes the working end of the space.

As with every Shaker Wholesale kitchen, the quality sits in the details throughout — solid oak dovetail drawers, oak veneer internals, and soft close runners, all built in traditional in-frame construction so the mantle, larder and island read as one cohesive piece of joinery rather than three separate items.

The palette is warm and unusual — in the client’s own words, “like ice cream.” A vanilla perimeter, a strawberry-pink island, and a pistachio range at the centre of it all. The perimeter cabinetry is hand-painted in a Little Greene neutral, soft and comfortably at home in a Victorian room, while the island is a Little Greene pink chosen to complement rather than contrast — a splash of colour that plays off the teal in the range without drenching the room.

A pink tile splashback runs along the back wall, added once it was recognised as essential with three small children in the house. The finishing touches are solid brass beehive doorknobs from the Suffolk Latch Company, chosen to match the doorknobs used throughout the rest of the house.