What makes a kitchen minimalist
Minimalism is often mistaken for modern with less in it. It is stricter than that. A modern kitchen lets one material show off. A minimalist kitchen asks every material to stay quiet, and asks you to put everything away. In the kitchen above there are two finishes, a grey and a pale timber, one black line between them, a grey bench, and a wall painted to match. There is no splashback, because a splashback would be a change. There is no handle, because a handle would be an object.
What you get in return is a room that feels finished at any time of day. Nothing is competing for your eye, so the light and the proportions do the work. It is the most restful style we make, and the least forgiving.
How we build it
The shadow line is the design. Where a normal kitchen has a handle, a minimalist one has a gap: a recessed aluminium rail, usually black, that runs under the uppers and along the top of each drawer. Your fingers go into the gap. For that gap to look like a single drawn line, every carcass has to be dead level and every front has to be identical in thickness, which is why we machine the lot in one batch and why the fronts are checked against each other before they leave the workshop.
Uppers are push-to-open on Blum TIP-ON BLUMOTION, so the soft close stays, with the rail below carrying the lighting. Push-to-open means a fingerprint at every push, and we will say so: it is more fun than practical, which is why the drawers get the rail. Benchtops are as thin as the material allows: 12 mm solid surface or 20 mm stone with a square edge. We keep the tap, the sink and the cooktop in a line, and we will talk you out of a coloured sink.
We build it matt. Gloss minimalist kitchens exist and both our suppliers make them, but a gloss front shows every fingerprint and reflection, and reflections are exactly what this style is trying to remove. Polytec’s Matt and Woodmatt ranges do not bounce light and wipe clean. If fingerprints worry you, Polytec Venette and Ultramatt are the ranges with a fingerprint-resistant claim; dark colours show marks in every range.
In a Perth home
A minimalist kitchen is the right answer for the apartment and the townhouse, where the kitchen sits in the living room and has to behave like furniture. It is also the style that makes a small space feel largest, because there is nothing for the eye to snag on. In a new build with big glazing and polished concrete, it is the natural choice.
It is an honest question whether it suits how you live. If the bench is where the toaster, the coffee machine and the school notes live, a minimalist kitchen will spend most of its life looking like a normal kitchen with the handles missing. Our Scandinavian page is the same calm with room for a shelf of things.
What it costs
A minimalist kitchen from us typically lands between $40,000 and $58,000 for the joinery: designed, made in our Malaga workshop and installed. Benchtop stone, appliances and the trades are separate bills, and we say what they are on the pricing page. The fronts are simple, but the tolerances are not, and the shadow-line rails, push-to-open fittings and integrated appliances that the style depends on add real cost. The benchtop, 12 mm solid surface or 20 mm stone, is priced by its maker.
