Curve or Swerve
Curve or Swerve?
We've all seen them on the TV adverts for kitchens and bedrooms, curved units with curved doors!!!
- "ooooo they're nice", You might say. Your right they are, well they look nice....
And then 6 months down the line you start thinking about that new kitchen you want and you WANT curved units!! You've seen them, you love them, you want them, you’re going to have them.
So you get them, they look ace! all your friends say they look ace too! Winner!! Right?
Well not so much because after the compliments have gone and it’s not the lovely new kitchen you had 6 months ago, it still looks nice but now it’s more about practicality. Christmas is coming up, you have friends and family over and you start filling your cupboards, you then realise that your lovely curved units don’t really do much, the convex curves are about as much use as a chocolate fire guard for storage and the concave corner unit you have can hold a lot sure, but you can’t really see what you have in there.
So they look nice, we can all agree on that but they aren't practical! If all you want is your kitchen to "look nice" then curved units and doors are right up your street.
By right up your street i mean, if you have a big enough budget. sure your thinking it’s only a few bits of curved pieces of timber etc. However there is more to consider price point wise. A standard end unit (let’s say a 300mm base unit door) should cost anywhere between £30 & £80 (depending on style, colour, finish and material) Well the minimum you will pay for a curved door to fit a 300 end unit is £450 to £500, that’s just the door! then the unit about twice as much as a standard base unit, curved plinth (kickboard), then you want to match it with a wall unit above so it has symmetry, so that’s another curved door, units, and now you'll need pelmet and cornice curved pieces too. So in two units your total has just gone up by at least £1500!! Quite a hike for two units that aren’t really going to be any use.
And now the caveat!
You’re going to need real wood worktops or granite because you can’t get a full curve on a laminate worktop, so instead of spending let’s say £600 on laminate worktops, you’re either spending £3000 on granite and another £1500 on top for fitting (extra for curves and profiled edges by the way) or you’re paying £1200 to £2000 on real wood worktops and then an extra £300 to £500 on fitting.
So, would you still go for a curve in your kitchen or are you going to swerve it and spend that money elsewhere?