UK Kitchen Design: The Unfitted Look - Home - Home Repair

The Historical BackgroundThe fitted kitchen first appeared in the UK early in the 20th century and really took over, in domestic kitchens, after the second world war. Before this time, in larger households, the mistress of the house would rarely, if ever, have ventured into the kitchen; she merely had to keep her domestics in order... although this might have been harder than it sounds! These are extracts from Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management published in 1861:

EARLY RISING IS ONE OF THE MOST ESSENTIAL QUALITIES which enter into good Household Management, as it is not only the parent of health, but of innumerable other advantages. Indeed, when a mistress is an early riser, it is almost certain that her house will be orderly and well-managed. On the contrary, if she remain in bed till a late hour, then the domestics, who, as we have before observed, invariably partake somewhat of their mistress's character, will surely become sluggards. To self-indulgence all are more or less disposed, and it is not to be expected that servants are freer from this fault than the heads of houses.

CLEANLINESS IS ALSO INDISPENSABLE TO HEALTH, and must be studied both in regard to the person and the house, and all that it contains. Cold or tepid baths should be employed every morning, unless, on account of illness or other circumstances, they should be deemed objectionable.

In the late 19th century, houses were becoming smaller and servants scarcer. The middle classes had arrived (with less money than the the upper class families they emulated) and middle class women had started spending time in their own kitchens for the first time. At the same time, urbanisation was continuing apace and a lot of new houses were being built. The two wars of the 20th century greatly exacerbated these trends and standards of hygeine were also being improved so kitchens moved out from the dark basements and the servants quarters, to become part of the main house (albeit tacked on at the rear somewhere). The advent of an electric supply to the kitchen also made a huge difference.

The Fitted KitchenInterior design, at this time, was greatly influenced by the Modern Movement in architecture, and the complete co-ordination of whole rooms was encouraged. (The work of the German Bauhaus movement, which had started in 1919, flourished after the Nazis were defeated). Kitchen design was also affected by the use of modern materials such as Formica and the advent of labour saving appliances from America. (Formica was originally a replacement for the insulation material Mica, hence: for... mica but was developed as a surface material in the 1930's). The result... was the fitted kitchen. A wall to wall expanse of fitted, modular units with virtually unbroken lengths of worktop. Only the appliances stood out.

Postmodernism in the late 1970's and early 1980's reacted against uniformity and efficiency and sleek modernism but, in kitchen design, this didn't lead to rejection of the fitted kitchen model. A romanticised view of the country kitchen emerged but this was just superimposed on the basic fitted kitchen layout. So, the perfect 1980's kitchen was in oak or pine with barley twists, elaborately carved pelmets, little gallery rails on open shelves, "leaded" glass display cabinets... but all arranged in rigid horizontal rows of base units and wall units. There was an ocassional "dresser" unit extending down to the worktop but usually flanked on one or both sides by lines of wall units. To add to the picture, the timber doors were often framed by a white line - the white melamine of the carcasses peeping through. (Can you tell I'm not a big fan?)

The Unfitted KitchenThe unfitted kitchen style is also a historical concept and is also a romanticised idea... but it does, I think, have more authenticity and to my mind it looks a whole lot better. Traditionally both urban and country kitchens would have had mostly free standing furniture... a range cooker, a central work table, a sink unit, and one or more dressers. Food storage would have been in the pantry or in aumbries (built-in cupboards - like the ones you often see either side of a chimney breast in an older house). Many people have embraced the idea of completely free standing furniture for modern kitchens... but I'm not a big fan of that either, at least not for the whole kitchen. I certainly wouldn't want to have to clean under all my units and retrieve dried peas, and the odd chip, from the gaps at the side of the cooker (no, of course I don't still fry chips - it was an illustration only!).

Johnny Grey - guru of kitchen designers - was the first to introduce the modern unfitted kitchen, in his book "The Art of Kitchen Design" first published in 1994. He was greatly influenced by his aunt, the cookery writer Elizabeth David, who had free standing furniture in her kitchen and did most of her food preparation on a scrubbed pine table, as well as doing most of her writing at a desk in the kitchen. The idea was then popularised when Johnny Grey collaborated with upmarket kitchen company Smallbone to bring this style of kitchen to the market.

In the unfitted kitchen, the emphasis is on separate areas of the room which are designed for different functions; food preparation, washing, dry food storage, cooking, cooling and so on. Each can be designed separately but all are co-ordinated into one overall design which works with the architecture of the room, rather than imposing a rigid structure of kitchen units. It can be quite fitted or it can be largely free standing but even if fully fitted... it looks unfitted. The island kitchen, where the traditional central work table has been replaced by units and worksurface, is a practical development of the same idea.

Your KitchenIf yours is a small kitchen it may be highly impractical to have anything but a fully fitted design but, to make it look unfitted you need to have different unit heights, different worktop heights, different depths of unit and you need to have spaces on the wall, especially in the corners of the room. If this would restrict your storage space too much, then try open shelves in the corners - they break up the uniformity of the fitted units, without losing the space. If you can fit in one free standing piece, like a dresser, then so much the better. You can also give the illusion of unfitted style by having two different finishes for units, or two different colours of the same finish, or two different worktop finishes.

Most upmarket kitchen companies produce kitchens which look unfitted and you can also see the influence of this style on less expensive kitchens. It works best in larger rooms but the same principles can be applied even to the smallest area. It is more difficult to design a kitchen which looks unfitted... that's perhaps why many kitchen designers haven't embraced the idea and still produce rigid horizontal lines of units. You can even find on-line kitchen design guides which tell you that all your units should be the same size, if possible, and that you should line up base and wall unit doors. Ignore them! And if you like the idea of this style for your kitchen - then don't let your designer get away with being lazy!

The other main influence on modern kitchen design is minimalism... which has produced the "new" fitted kitchen... but that's another article.

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