HAWK K&B


The Kitchen at Christmas

The Kitchen at Christmas

For many, the most important part of the festive period is the entertaining. From a lavish family Christmas dinner to canapes and cocktails with friends, the kitchen becomes the focus. Creating the correct atmosphere in your home will make your guests feel immediately welcome and with the right space to do so, you can put on a party that everyone will enjoy, including you, the host.

An open-plan living and dining area works wonderfully for entertaining, creating a space that achieves the perfect balance of socialising and cooking. A spectacularly laid dining table is essential for a family Christmas dinner and in an open-plan setting, the guests and hosts can intermingle, creating the perfect social atmosphere. Coupling your dining area alongside a cosy seating area means guests will also have somewhere to relax and recline after dinner.

christmas-kitchen-design
Image via Hawk K&B

For evening entertaining, an informal seating area, on an island or breakfast bar is great. An island can act as a great focus in a room, particularly when laden with beautiful food and drink. People will congregate around it and any high stools will allow guests to take a seat without feeling left out.

neff-ovens
Image via NEFF

Finally, the addition of good quality appliances is vital when it comes to the cooking itself. Integrated double ovens will give you plenty of cooking space and details such as Circotherm on NEFF ovens allows you to cook on up to 4 levels at the same time without any flavours intermingling, not to mention the Slide & Hide door meaning you won’t be getting in the way of guests when tending to things in the oven. Alternatively leave the cooking entirely up to the oven by opting for a Siemens oven with Home Connect. Just can send all your recipes and cooking instructions straight to your oven from your phone and receive notifications when the cooking is finished via your phone or Amazon Alexa, allowing you to sit back and enjoy entertaining.

Choosing a Kitchen Worktop

Kitchen worktops are one of the key elements that will bring your new kitchen together. Choosing the correct colour, material and finish can be a hard decision to make and whatever you choose needs to fit into your lifestyle and the way you use your kitchen.

Durability and low maintenance are often high up on the list of must haves for a kitchen worktop but style also needs to be considered. Here at Hawk K&B there are various worktop styles that we use to provide a solution to meet these expectations.

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Image via Hawk K&B

Our most popular choice of worktop is Silestone. Made of 94% natural quartz, it is extremely hard and resilient, making it excellent for kitchen worktops. The non-porous surface means it’s highly resistant to kitchen spills and stains and won’t allow any bacteria to grow.

The addition of small amounts of glass allows Silestone to come in more than 90 different colours and with three different textured finishes; it gives a refined and polished look to any new kitchen.

kitchen-worktops
Image via Hawk K&B

You can also cover not only worktops but also floors, walls or the front or downstand of your worktop with absolutely no joins, creating a beautifully seamless appearance. The addition of built in integrity sinks this year has added even more appeal to those wanting complete continuity in their kitchen.

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Image via Hawk K&B

Another material that is widely appreciated in kitchen worktops is granite. This natural rock is cut in its natural state and then polished for use in the home, making every piece unique. Being such a strong material also means it is able to resist temperature changes and is difficult to scratch, however it isn’t completely maintenance free and requires careful cleaning to keep it in pristine condition.

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Image sourced via Hawk K&B

One of the latest worktop surfaces is Dekton. A sophisticated blend of the raw materials used in glass, porcelain and quartz surface production makes it a unique material that has endless potential for kitchen surfaces, not just worktops but outdoor surfaces too. Due to its construction, Dekton comes with all the properties we all want and need in a kitchen worktop. Among many other benefits, it’s highly scratch resistant, withstands high temperatures without burning, scorching or cracking (meaning hot pots can be placed directly onto it) and it’s completely stain proof.

Again coming in many colours and finishes, if offers lots of potential for mixing textures as we have done in the kitchen above to create a dynamic and striking space.