Surry Hills Apartment Kitchen in Gloss White

The old kitchen was not worn out. It was white laminate with bar handles, a stainless inset sink and drainer, a freestanding dishwasher on the end of the island, and large beige floor tiles that marked the kitchen off from the carpeted living room. Everything in it worked. It just looked like the year it was built, and the split floor cut the room in two.

We rebuilt the island on the same footprint in a white stone-look with waterfall ends running to the floor. Dropping the handles and hiding the dishwasher takes most of the visual noise out of the piece you see first when you walk in. The sink became a black composite with an integrated drainer, paired with a black pull-out mixer, and that is the only strong contrast anywhere in the room.

The floor did the rest. Oak-look planks replaced both the beige tile and the carpet, so nothing changes underfoot between the balcony doors and the hallway. In an open-plan apartment that one change is what makes a kitchen read as furniture in a room rather than a wet area bolted onto it.

The back wall is one run of gloss white doors carried to the ceiling. Handleless fronts mean no line of pulls across it, so from the living room it reads as a wall with a kitchen in it. Taking the joinery all the way up also removes the dust ledge a standard overhead leaves and turns the space above it into storage.

The appliances sit inside that run. Oven and microwave stack in a single tall cabinet in black glass, drawer banks take the base under the cooktop, and a recess sized for a freestanding fridge sits at the far end with a cupboard over the top. A recess rather than an integrated door was the practical call, because it takes any standard fridge and it will take the next one too.

Behind the cooktop is a pale glass splashback instead of tile: one panel, two joints, and no grout to scrub. Nothing hangs above the cooktop either, with the extraction set flush into the ceiling, which is what keeps the line along the bench clean.

The same joinery language carried into the bedroom. Floor-to-ceiling wardrobes fill the recess wall in flat white doors with slim vertical pulls, closed tight to the ceiling so there is no gap collecting dust on top.

Wardrobes are worth building at the same time as a kitchen. The cabinetmaker measures once, the same door finish covers both rooms, and one delivery and one lift booking cover the lot instead of two. Free-standing robes give up floor on every side and never quite line up with the wall they sit against.