An extractor might not quite top your kitchen appliance wish list but a decent one can make all the difference to air quality in this important spot. We spend a lot of time in our kitchens, breathing sweet fresh air if we're lucky. The smells of coffee and baking bread are a delight but onions, fried foods, brassicas - not quite so much. These waft about the house and even linger in furnishings if not dealt with pretty quickly.
A good strong fan is a must. This can be fitted in a handsome housing unit that offers a number of functions and benefits. First of all the fan needs to be powerful enough to suck away all smells and grease particles. As this can be a noisy business the fan should be well insulated in order not to drown out conversation and music – it can also be a good place to house your speakers…
I like to imagine and build an extractor like a sci-fi aeroplane, a flying gantry made of function-driven parts, using aluminium cylinders, rectangular outriggers and lightweight stainless steel sections and walnut timber inserts (dark woods are best here as they don’t change colour over time as obviously as paler woods). Shapewise, this gantry works well to echo the form of the central island or peninsula below. This helps the extractor canopy harmonise with the rest of the kitchen design.
Setting spotlights into an extractor unit avoids the drawback of ceiling lights that can throw out a bland over-diffused kind of light, like an airport building, due to their distance from work surfaces. Task lighting positioned nearer the sites of food preparation creates a more intimate atmosphere as well as stronger pools of light. It’s also easier to change bulbs if they’re not high in the ceiling. We place spotlights in the surfaces of our specially designed extractor units.
A fan and its casing make a good spot near a cooktop for keeping small utensils visible and in reach. Our gantry designs give clients an opportunity to decide just how they want to place and hang anything they want, from colanders and spatulas to saucepans and pizza cutters. And if you want be really up to date, it’s a perfect location for locating your Amazon Echo or Google Home.