How we chose the Brampton Limestone floor tile for the Spenlow Kitchen in the Humphrey Munson St. Albans showroom

It’s one of the hardest aspects of a kitchen design – how to pull together the whole look to create a cohesive look and feel for the space that perfectly captures the original vision you had.

If you think of kitchen design in terms of layers you can structure your interior design of the room much more easily: – first the architectural design layer, then the layout and flow layer, then the interior decoration and finishes layer last of all. If you’re able to choose the surface early on (e.g. stone floor, wooden floor, ceramic etc) in the design process that’s really helpful but the actual finish of the flooring should be left as one of the last details once you’re looking at colours, worktops and hardware.

Of course, alternatively you can choose the floor tile at the start and shape the design around this choice but you get more flexibility if you can wait until further into the detailed design work

The colours and finishes above for the Spenlow kitchen are as follows:

• Perimeter cabinetry – ‘Duffle’
• Island and Georgian doors – ‘Top Hat’
• Walls, door architrave and skirting – ‘Tailored Grey’
• Interior Cabinetry – ‘Smithfield Weathered Oak’
• Worktops – ‘Knightsbridge by CRL’

We chose the above first for the space and this was based on the light and architecture of the room and captured exactly the look and feel we wanted to achieve with this space. We looked at the stone samples in conjunction with the colours and finishes above.

We chose the Brampton tile for its character and interest – big swirls, lines and lots of random holes and black carbon deposits give this stone flooring plenty of that interest that only natural stone flooring can bring to a room.

For the grout we chose the Ardex grout in Silver Shimmer – a soft grey which works perfectly with the colours and particularly the Smithfield weathered oak. If we’d wanted a more neutral floor – we would chosen the Natural Almond grout also by Ardex. There is more info here on choosing a grout colour for the Brampton limestone.