Luxury Designer Kitchens
What Defines a Designer Kitchen Style?
Designer kitchens offer the ultimate in personalised luxury and are crafted to reflect each client’s individual taste. Every Papilio kitchen delivers the key benefits of high-end materials, custom finishes, and exceptional quality, ensuring a truly unique and lasting investment.
Building on this, designer kitchens are truly bespoke, featuring made-to-measure, handmade cabinetry, specialised architectural and spatial planning, and premium materials with refined detailing. Every detail is deliberate, never drawn from a template or pre-conceived model. Papilio designer kitchens are crafted the traditional way, employing time-honoured skills and techniques, offering you peace of mind for a kitchen that lasts a lifetime.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can designer kitchens also be tech-savvy?
Absolutely! We work closely with our clients to ensure every requirement is met. So if you’re after voice-activated taps, in-fridge cameras to help with shopping or sensor lighting, we can make it happen.
Are designer kitchens practical?
Designer kitchens can be very practical. We always ensure that functionality takes centre stage before aesthetics. Our mission is to design your dream kitchen that is practical.
Do you supply designer appliances?
We will discuss appliances with you in the early stages. We work closely with a number of premium suppliers, including Miele, Bora, Sub-Zero and Wolf. We often review appliance pricing early to allocate budgets appropriately.
Recent Designer Kitchen Projects
Materials and Cabinet Construction
At Papilio, we take materials and cabinet construction very seriously. Every aspect of our cabinets is considered and made from scratch, so they can be tailored to our clients’ unique requirements. We prefer to work with natural materials that have stood the test of time. From rare marble to responsibly sourced oak, reclaimed terracotta or metals that patina over time. Our extensive knowledge of materials ensures a beautiful, functional handmade kitchen every time. With modern engineered materials, we apply a similar discipline and prefer manufacturers like Richlite, Valchromat, and Fenix, which we know have a lower impact on the planet and offer durability, versatility, and high-quality finishes.
Our dedication to craftsmanship is reflected in how we build our designer kitchens in Somerset, crafted by highly experienced master cabinetmakers whose skills enable almost limitless possibilities. Decades of expertise allow us to transform spaces with detailing built to endure. For example, our North London Kitchen features oak, marble, and black glass, while the Frome Kitchen highlights Valchromat, red-tinted walnut, and brass trim—demonstrating our commitment to thoughtful material selection and construction.
Worktops, Hardware and Detailing
Our designer kitchens are often distinguished by the worktops, hardware and bespoke detailing. From taps to sinks, light switches to splashbacks, we pride ourselves on paying close attention to every detail because every component matters. The humble kitchen tap is an essential piece of hardware you use several times a day, so it must function well. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t stand out and highlight the overall style of a dream kitchen. From a pair of beautiful wall-mounted mono mixer brass taps by Studio Ore for our Richlite Kitchen project to a Lefroy Brooks tap for our Bruton Kitchen project.
The modern take on a classic, the Ten Ten kitchen bridge mixer with levers is a stunning piece of hardware.
Designer kitchens also allow freedom in worktop materials and finishes. We appreciate combining contrasts—textures, colours, and finishes that imbue personality and drama. For instance, the Cowbridge Kitchen in Wales emphasises contrasting materials: textured solid oak, matte-black Fenix, and specially sourced black limestone.
Storage and Practical Planning
At Papilio, our bespoke kitchen design service emphasises practical planning for optimal storage solutions. Innovative ideas emerge from a design process that starts with understanding your space and how you use it. Collaboration with clients is central to ensuring every kitchen fits their lifestyle.
For our Kitchen in Bath project, we designed a bespoke breakfast cabinet as a stand-alone piece of furniture. With shelving and panelled doors atop the cool marble surface, the breakfast cupboard is a take on a traditional larder cabinet, with benefits. Because of the convenience of electrics, it houses a toaster, coffee maker and crockery neatly contained within beautiful cabinetry.
Another example of clever storage and practical planning can be found in our Bath Kitchen project. Featuring a hidden utility, it is functional and accessible, and hidden during dinner parties and social gatherings. The hidden utility room features doors that, when closed, disguise themselves as kitchen cabinets and, when open, nestle neatly into a recess, creating a panelled door lining as if there were no doors at all.
Kitchen Islands and Layout Options
We have worked with many spaces, ranging in shape and size, to design our handmade kitchens. One of the first aspects we will consider is the layout. We investigate how homeowners navigate the space, whether they entertain often, and how they cook and move around, all of which inform how we design our kitchens. We will consider L-shaped, one-wall, or galley kitchen layouts, but we love a kitchen island formation. Kitchen islands are popular and for good reason. They offer a wealth of benefits. A well-placed island can create more worktop space, a place to entertain, eat, and sit, and provide more storage. Kitchen islands can also be flexible, and not all need to be static. They can be designed to move within the kitchen with the right know-how.
A fine example of the multi-functional kitchen island layout can be found in our Georgian Townhouse Kitchen in Bath project. The centrepiece, from which the design is formed, is a multifunctional handmade kitchen island with curved lines and low angles to maximise performance, comfort, and storage. We incorporated a banquette seating area to provide much-needed dining space, featuring brown leather and a custom-made walnut dining table. The island features casters for easy movement around the space when entertaining, while the unit offers ample storage finished with Armac Martin hardware.
Want to Know More?
We’d love to help create your perfect designer kitchen. Contact our team today to discuss your vision and book a personal consultation with our expert designers.
