French Country Kitchen

French Country design was the guiding inspiration for this refined kitchen in a custom home we built for clients in Dalkeith, one of Perth’s most established and architecturally significant suburbs. The brief called for a kitchen that felt genuinely French Provincial in character: unhurried, layered and built around craftsmanship rather than trend. Oswald Homes’ interior design team approached the space as they would any bespoke commission, working through every material, finish and fitting to create a kitchen that reads as a coherent whole. The result is as comfortable to cook in every day as it is to entertain around on weekends.

The design layered contrasting materials with deliberate care. Walnut-stained American White Oak for the top of the island bench, finished with a double French ogee edge, picks up on the curves of the lights hanging above. It is about building small visual connections across the room so that nothing reads as an afterthought. Timber flooring runs through the rest of the house and draws the warmth from the kitchen outward, linking the spaces rather than separating them. The layering of timber on timber, at different finishes and scales, is a technique that French Provincial design handles particularly well and one that gives this custom kitchen its depth and sense of permanence.

The island bench was designed to function as a piece of furniture in its own right, not as a service element dropped into the middle of the room. It acts as the focal point around which the rest of the kitchen is arranged. The soft white cabinetry, painted in Dulux two-pack Whitsunday Island, provides the clean, pale backdrop that French Country design depends on to let darker materials breathe. The timber elements create the necessary contrast and, critically, they allowed the design team to introduce antique brass fittings throughout. The brass adds warmth and period character without feeling heavy. It is precisely the kind of considered detail that separates a luxury custom kitchen from a well-specified standard one.

The cabinets have a Shaker profile and the stone benchtop on the back wall of the kitchen is Caesarstone Emperordoro, which is a chocolaty-brown with creamy marbling. We used antique brass cabinet handles to pick up the layers of brown in the stone, timber and travertine marble floor.

The over-sized lights above the island bench were imported from America.

There is a different embossed pattern on each of the creamy-white tiles we used, creating a subtle mosaic effect that adds to the layering of detail.

Adding the wide architrave and simple glazing bars added to the sense of substance. It also created a window effect that tied in with the home’s timber joinery.

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