My first experience of seeing concrete used in a kitchen was years ago – way before concrete started popping up in super-cool interiors all over blogs and on Pinterest. Indeed, way before Pinterest. Turn the clock back about 15 years and I was writing about a Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh where the designer – it was also her home – had installed a contemporary kitchen featuring a poured concrete worktop. Now, I won’t pretend to know the practicalities of this, but I recall that it was a challenging detail as the kitchen needed to have a reinforced frame of some kind to support the weight. The concrete looked fantastic though, with a lovely patina. And, I remember, it felt very different to the sleek granite worktops I was seeing everywhere at that time. I was sold.
Of course, these days, we see this finish popping up in various forms in interiors, from floors to exposed concrete walls, and there are more specialist companies around who work with the material, which opens up the possibilities to designers and consumers alike. And I’ve featured concrete here before – the kitchen in Casa Do Pego comes to mind. Which is why this new Tocco range from LEICHT kitchens caught my eye.
Leicht has introduced a Concrete range of kitchens for 2015 where fine concrete is manually applied to MDF bases using the putty technique. A matt lacquer seal makes the finish very durable and also gives it a silky feel, and the surface comes ‘alive’ as it catches the light. As LEICHT’s UK Sales Director Graham Hopper says: “LEICHT likes to be a the forefront of kitchen design and this new range for 2015 illustrates this innovative approach.”
The Concrete range features streamlined handle-less cabinets and comes in three colour blends: light (Manhattan), dark (Brasilia) and a rusty-tinted grey (Le Havre). Frankly, I’m sold on the dark grey palette of Brasilia shown here, but I can’t help feeling that the rusty tones of Le Havre will look amazing in the flesh.
And I love the combination here with the timber breakfast bar – a nice organic touch – and with the very, very slender worktop. Beautiful.
See LEICHT for more information on the new Concrete range. All photography from LEICHT.
