Slab door kitchens with handles for South East London

Handles, done properly

A short chrome bar centred on a high gloss white door is what most people think of when handles feel dated. A hardware choice made in isolation, does not great design make.

Instead, run the bar close to the full height of the door, and it stops reading 90s and starts arguing the same case as everything around it…

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Inside a handled slab kitchen

Take a closer look at how the handles work across the room.

TODO, rewrite from the photograph. Drafted from the copy: a handled kitchen with long bronze bar handles running most of the height of each door, a full-height cabinetry run broken by a built-in oven column and a lit open walnut shelving bay, and a stone island with no hardware on the side facing the room.

Slab kitchens

Long bar handles

The bars run close to the full height of each door in a warm bronze that matches the window frames across the room. This is the argument against handles looking dated: a short chrome bar bolted to the middle of a door is a fitting. A long bar set off-centre, in a finish the rest of the room is already wearing, is a line drawn into the design.

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Slab kitchens

The tall cabinetry

The bars don’t sit at a fixed height on every door, they follow the same proportion up the run, which is what makes a wall this long read as one composition instead of a row of cupboards each fitted with its own handle. It’s the same logic as an Italian gola channel, one detail repeated at the same ratio wherever it appears, just carried by hardware instead of a recess.

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Slab kitchens

Stone island

Nothing on the island competes with the stone. No hardware, no visible fronts facing the room, so the veining carries the whole argument on this side of the kitchen. A handled kitchen doesn’t need every surface to make a point at once.

Kitchen worktops

Slab kitchens

Built-in ovens

The oven column site between two tall units either side opening in different directions, so the appliance reads as a framed break in the run.

Kitchen appliances

Slab kitchens

Walnut display niche

One bay breaks from the run entirely: open walnut shelving, lit at each edge, with no door and so no handle to place. Next to a long wall of cabinets, the open shelving is a show stopper.

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Finishes for a slab door

Slab doors. Full height, flat surface. The finish is the whole design.

Our slab kitchens are manufactured by Zecchinon Cucine and their finishes are spectacular: hand-applied lacquer, real veneer, glass, stone and self-healing Fenix from Arpa Industriale. A matt, fingerprint resistant surface, it’s cured onto the panel and light scratches heal out with a little heat, a genuinely new argument for a kitchen door.

Lacquer is sprayed and cured, which is why the edges stay sharp for decades. Veneer can be laid so the grain carries from one door to the next. Glass and stone bring their own depth.

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Handle styles

Handles are chosen against the finish, full height on the door, one bar repeated down the whole run. Burnished brass on oak, polished chrome on matt graphite: hold one against the other before you decide.

Slab kitchens

Long bar handles

A bar running most of the height of a tall door, or the full width of a drawer, is the most contemporary of the four. Repeated down a bank of drawers it gives the run a clear horizontal rhythm, which is why bar lengths are best decided on the elevation alongside the cabinetry sizes.

Modern and contemporary kitchens

Slab kitchens

Knobs

A single point of contact, which makes a knob ideal on a door you open with two fingers and better avoided on a heavily loaded drawer. On a flat front they read as small, deliberate details, and they’re where a slab kitchen borrows a little warmth from a traditional one. On wider drawers, a pair set in from the edges keeps the balance.

Traditional kitchens

Slab kitchens

D and bow handles

The most versatile of the four. Short enough to sit comfortably on a base unit, long enough to take a full hand, and made in almost every finish available. A bow handle is the same profile with a gentle curve, which softens a slab front while keeping it contemporary. Where a kitchen has doors and drawers at many different sizes, this is the handle that suits them all.

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Slab kitchens

Handleless kitchens

Every handle on this strip still asks something of the door, a bar, a knob, or a pull set along the top edge. The Groove is our handleless system instead: an aluminium channel cut into the carcass behind the door, so your hand finds the grip wherever it's needed, and the front reads as one continuous line.

Handleless kitchens
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Specifying handles

A few things worth settling early.

Slab kitchens

How long should a handle be?

Proportion does most of the deciding. On a tall door a bar looks best running at least two thirds of the height, and on a bank of drawers a single length across the whole run keeps everything aligned even where the drawer depths vary. Both are settled on the elevation, alongside the cabinetry sizes.

How we design

Slab kitchens

What about the other metals in the room?

Warm metals sit together, brass, bronze, copper. Cool metals sit together, chrome, nickel, stainless. Black works with either.

Ponti and the Castiglioni brothers worked from one material logic per piece, not several finishes competing. The handle is the metal your hand meets most, so we use that to guide the material decisions across the room.

Sinks and taps

Slab kitchens

Can you mix handled and handleless?

Yes, and it’s a combination that can work beautifully. A wall of full-height cabinetry can benefit from a vertical line breaking up the surface. Drawers, islands, and any run broken by a worktop prep area, stay handleless, so your hands meet a flat front where you’re actually working.

Handleless kitchens

Designed for your home

Every slab kitchen is drawn for the room it goes in, door widths, drawer depths and handle lengths settled together on the same elevation before anything is cut. That's the discipline Gio Ponti argued for: proportion decided as one drawing, not assembled from parts chosen separately. It's why the same approach serves a mid-century minimal scheme and a more contemporary European one equally well.

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What Customers Say

Come and see our handle selection

Our Brockley kitchen studio has slab doors in a variety of the finishes we specify most often, with handles to hold against them, so you can see how a warm metal sits on a matt graphite in real light. If you've already got a finish in mind, tell Andrew and he'll show you the handles that work best against it.

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