Kitchen design · Canberra & the ACT
Good design is the difference between a kitchen that looks new and a kitchen that works. We design in-house, against real measurements of your home, so the decisions are made while they're still cheap to change.
Our approach
3D renders are useful, and we produce them. But a render is a tool, not the point. The point is that by the time your kitchen is manufactured you have already decided — with evidence in front of you — where the bin goes, whether the island is deep enough to sit at, whether that dark finish still looks right in a west-facing room at four o'clock, and whether the pantry holds what you own.
Because we manufacture the cabinetry ourselves in Mitchell, the design isn't constrained to a catalogue of module sizes. If your room calls for a 640mm cabinet or a bench return that follows an out-of-square wall, that's what gets drawn and that's what gets built.
Design is part of the renovation rather than a separate product we sell. It leads directly into an itemised quote for the whole job.
The design stage
We measure the room properly — walls, windows, ceiling heights, service positions, the things that aren't square — and talk through how the kitchen is used now. Who cooks, where the bins live, what's always in the wrong place.
Where the sink, cooktop, fridge and bin sit relative to each other decides whether a kitchen is pleasant to use. We test the realistic layouts for your room, including the ones that need a wall moved and the ones that don't.
Cabinetry is designed around what you actually own: pots, appliances you use daily versus twice a year, pantry goods, recycling, tall items. Drawers beat cupboards for most of it, and we'll say where they don't.
Dimensioned plans and elevations showing every cabinet, appliance and service position. These are the drawings the trades and the workshop build from, so they're worth reading carefully.
The same kitchen rendered in the finishes you've chosen, so you can see the proportions, the colour combination and how the room reads before you commit. Vortek walkthrough capability lets you move through the space rather than look at one angle.
Doors and panels from the Polytec and Laminex ranges, benchtop material, hardware, handles or handleless profiles, splashback. We bring samples so you're comparing real finishes in your own light, not a screen in a showroom.
Changing a drawing is free. Changing a manufactured cabinet is not. We expect a round or two of revisions and would rather you use them.
You approve the final drawings and the finish schedule, and that becomes what gets made. Nothing enters manufacture on a verbal agreement.
Design decisions
These are the discussions that take up most of a design consultation in a Canberra home.
Islands are wanted more often than rooms can carry. We check clearances against your actual walls before anyone falls in love with a drawing — a peninsula frequently does the same job in a Canberra kitchen with more usable bench.
Opening a kitchen to the living area is common in older Canberra homes and is sometimes simple and sometimes structural. We identify that early, because it changes both the design and the budget.
Matt, gloss and timbergrain behave differently with Canberra's hard light and long winter shadows. Fingerprints, steam near the cooktop and sun fade on a north face all get a say in the finish schedule.
What you receive
Plan view and elevations with cabinet sizes, appliance positions and service locations — the drawings the workshop and the trades build from.
Your kitchen in your chosen finishes, with Vortek walkthrough capability so you can judge scale and proportion rather than guess at them.
Exactly which door range, colour, benchtop material and hardware is going into the kitchen, so the quote and the finished job match.
Everything that happens after sign-off: manufacture, demolition, trades, benchtops, installation and handover.
Genuine Canberra projects in Kaleen, Deakin, Chapman, Nicholls and more.
Where the money goes in a Canberra kitchen and what a $25,000 job differs from a $45,000 one.
Send through your suburb and a little about the kitchen. If we're a fit, we'll measure up in your home and start drawing.