Kitchen designer in Mount Maunganui.
If you are planning a kitchen at Mount Maunganui, you are making one of the larger and most permanent decisions in your home, and you want to get it right. You have collected the images you keep coming back to. What is harder is turning them into something that will be built, hold up to coastal family life, and still feel right in ten years. That is the part I carry for you. I am a mobile kitchen designer working across Mount Maunganui and the wider Bay of Plenty: I come to your home and design the kitchen around your actual space, the light, the outlook, and the way you live, cook and gather, rather than fitting you to a showroom range.
Designed for coastal living at the Mount.
A kitchen at the Mount is lived in around the outdoors. The doors are open through summer, the kitchen runs out to the deck, and it works hard when the house is full of people and salt air. That way of living belongs in the design from the start: how the kitchen opens to the outside, where people gather while someone cooks, and materials chosen to hold up to sun and sea.
Most kitchen design starts with a product range and fits you to what is in stock. I work the other way, beginning with the home, the light, and how you actually use the space, then designing the kitchen to that. It is the reason a coastal kitchen still suits you in ten years, rather than looking right on the day and wearing poorly once a few seasons have been through it.
A Mount Maunganui kitchen.
One of my Mount Maunganui kitchens shows how this comes together. The home has a strong, linear feel, with existing ceiling beams the owners wanted kept and celebrated, so the kitchen was designed around them: long, low and horizontal, sitting quietly beneath the beams rather than competing with them.
The layout was resolved first, around how the household cooks, gathers and moves out to the coast. Only then were the materials chosen, for the light and the setting: timber-look cabinetry warmed against white walls, white acrylic for a clean, hard-wearing finish, and fine brass detailing. The kitchen is anchored by a single white porcelain that runs through the whole space: it encases the rangehood at the ceiling, carries down the wall and across the benchtops, and folds down the mitred waterfall ends of the dual peninsulas to meet the natural timber floor, one material in one continuous line from ceiling to floor. The result is a calm kitchen made for this home and the way this family lives by the beach.
A qualified designer who holds the whole project.
I am a Certified Kitchen Designer (CKDNZ), and I came to the work from a professional kitchen, a building site, and the study of how people live in a space. It is also why a kitchen can be resolved as one considered whole, with the function settled before the finishes are chosen. Because the studio is low-volume, I design every kitchen myself and hold the project from the first conversation to the final detail: designing it, procuring the cabinetry, surfaces and appliances through trade relationships, and coordinating with your builder so the kitchen lands cleanly inside the wider build. The full design process is set out on the services page.
Working across Mount Maunganui and the Bay.
I am a mobile designer, so I come to you and design from your actual home rather than asking you to visit a showroom. I work right across the Mount and the surrounding coast, from Omanu and Arataki through to the wider Bay of Plenty, whether it is a standalone home, a townhouse or a coastal renovation. The plan is always shaped by your home, its light and its outlook, not by a layout drawn somewhere else.
Kate Blakeborough, CKDNZ. The considered hand behind every Design Suite kitchen.
Common Questions.
Do you design coastal and beachside homes at the Mount?
Yes. A coastal kitchen has its own considerations: how it opens to the outdoors, how it handles a full house through summer, and materials that hold up to sun and sea. I design around all of that, because a kitchen by the water is lived in differently from one inland.
Is it worth engaging a designer for a project like this?
A kitchen is one of the larger and most permanent investments in a home, and the design is what protects that spend. Resolving the layout, the flow and the materials before anything is ordered is what avoids the expensive changes and the compromises noticed a year in. A designer is not an added cost on top of the kitchen; it is what makes the much larger investment land right the first time. Cost is discussed openly and early, so you always know where a project sits before you commit.
Do you design kitchens for townhouses as well as standalone homes?
Yes. Whether it is a family home, a townhouse or a coastal renovation, I design from your actual space, so the kitchen suits how you really use it and how it connects to the rest of the home.
How do I start?
The first step is a conversation, with no pressure in it. We talk through how you live, what is not working now, and whether a design-led approach is the right fit.
Do you work across the Mount, Omanu and Arataki?
Yes. I am a mobile designer and come to you, designing from your home right across Mount Maunganui and the surrounding coast.
Begin a Design Conversation.
If you are planning a kitchen at Mount Maunganui and want it designed around your home and the way you live by the coast, the first step is a conversation. We talk through how you live, what is not working now, and whether a design-led approach suits your project. There is no pressure in it.