Some kitchens are designed to be admired from the doorway. This one was designed to be lived in long after the sun has gone down. Tucked beneath a timber pergola in its own space in the garden of a striking Beaconsfield newbuild, our clients’ outdoor kitchen is the kitchen of space you find yourself drawn to without quite realising it. Coffee in the morning as the sun rises. Long lunches through the day in the summer. A glass of something cold while the steaks rest in the early evening. The barbecue is still going as the candles come out and the sun goes down.
The design began, like all of our projects, with a conversation about how a family really wanted to live in their home. This client, in particular, had built somewhere remarkable: a house full of considered detail, generous proportions and a quiet kind of luxury that runs through every room. The garden, beautifully landscaped and anchored by a pergola against the brick wall of the house, was always meant to be more than scenery. They wanted to cook out there, entertain and spend wholesome evenings, even when the British weather wasn’t entirely on board with the plan.
We followed a brief, and it resulted in a year-round outdoor kitchen that didn’t just sit in the garden but belonged to the house; an extension of the interior, not an afterthought beside it.
This is the story of how this outdoor kitchen came together, and the design notes behind every decision we made along the way. We cannot wait to share it all with you. So, come on the ride with us!
The Style – Interior & Exterior
With the brief in mind, the question we kept coming back to was how to give this outdoor kitchen a real identity of its own. Something that felt distinctly modern, luxurious, and just a little ahead of the curve. The answer was our handleless design, finished with slim vertical slats that would flow seamlessly across the section. It’s a detail we’re seeing more and more in the country’s most luxurious homes, and the first time we suggested it for the outdoor kitchen, our clients knew straight away it was the right call.
The slats are designed to add rhythm, depth and a sense of craftsmanship to what could otherwise be a flat run of doors, while the handleless silhouette keeps the overall look clean, modern and uncluttered. What was an aesthetic that lived almost exclusively indoors, bringing it outside was the best decision our clients made for this project. The result is a fast, fashion-forward style that doesn’t shout, but quietly tells you everything you need to know about the rest of the house.
Keeping it beautifully simple is the layout: a single galley run, generous enough to comfortably house the outdoor cooking alliances without ever feeling cramped or busy. It’s a restrained meeting of confidence, and exactly the considered design language our clients had hoped to carry from the interior of their home out into the garden.
The Colours
Once the kitchen’s silhouette was settled, attention turned to the finish, and this is where the project really starts to feel like itself. We landed on a medium oak, chosen for the warmth and beauty it brings to spaces. Where a cooler finish might have felt clinical against the open sky, the oak gives the kitchen a soft, inviting glow that holds its character whether you’re cooking in bright summer sun or stepping out into it on a crisp autumn evening.
It also does something quite clever: it lets the kitchen sit in conversation with everything around it. The medium oak sits a touch darker than the pergola overhead, giving the kitchen its own gentle weight in the space rather than disappearing into the timber above it. The fresh, white-painted brickwork of the house then settles the wood beautifully, providing a cool, clean backdrop that lets the oak’s warmth come forward without ever feeling heavy. Underfoot, the stone flooring grounds the whole composition.
Crowning the kitchen is the Black Impala granite worktops, and it’s the choice that pulls the whole palette into focus. Deep, rich and quietly speckled, it provides a confident horizontal line across the run of cabinetry and gives the medium oak something to anchor against. Black against warm oak, against white-ainted brick, against the natural timber of the pergola: a four-part material conversation forms a beautiful scope for conversation. Nothing competes, and nothing clashes. Each material does its job very well, and the kitchen feels as though it has always belonged in this corner of the garden.
The Appliances
Taking the heart of the kitchen are the appliances. Set into the centre and off to the side, sit two of the most iconic pieces of outdoor cooking equipment money can buy: a large Big Green Egg, a ceramic charcoal BBQ and a Napoleon Prestige built-in natural gas BBQ. They are individually beautiful objects in their own right. Together, they’re a statement about the way our clients wanted to cook outside.
The Big Green Egg is the indulgence. Its rich, green ceramic curves are unmistakable, and its reputation among serious cooks is well-earned. This is the appliance for low-and-slow weekends and woodsmoke obsessives: brisket on a Sunday afternoon that’s been resting on the rack since breakfast, pulled pork shoulders pulled apart with two forks, racks of ribs glazed to a deep mahogany shine. There’s a ritual to cooking on the Egg, and that ritual is exactly the point.
Alongside it, and sat centrally is the Napoleon Prestige, taking on the everyday rhythm of the household. This is the workhorse, ready in minutes for midweek dinners, Sunday lunches with the family and last-minute gatherings when friends decide to drop by—steaks seared with proper grill marks. Whole sea bass, garlic prawns, halloumi, charred peppers and chicken thighs marinated for the day and grilled to order. It does the quick weekday cooking with the same composure that the Big Green Egg brings.
This partnership of appliances covers every mood and every season. It’s the kind of arrangement that stops people in their tracks the first time they walk into the garden.
The Finishing Touches
The finishing touches are the details that complete a good design. This outdoor kitchen in Beaconsfield is a perfect example.
Tucked neatly beneath the Big Green Egg, a bespoke log store turns a piece of practical storage into a piece of styling. Stacked logs sit on display as part of the kitchen’s design language, lending texture, depth and a sense of well-earned rustic warmth to the run of cabinetry. It’s a feature with one foot in function and the other in beauty: the logs are exactly where you want them when you need them.
The Black Impala granite steps up the wall behind the run. It then flows down the end of the cabinetry as a beautifully crisp waterfall edge, turning the granite into a piece of architecture as much as a surface. And around the Big Green Egg and Napoleon Prestige, the granite has been precisely templated and cut to house each appliance, creating a clean, considered frame.
It’s in these moments that the project really comes together.
The Overall Garden Design
Step back from the cabinetry and design, and you start to see why this kitchen feels so naturally at home in its setting. It hasn’t been dropped into the middle of the garden as a feature. Instead, it’s been tucked into its own corner of the plot. It’s a cosy snug, in the best sense of the word: a place to gather around, sit close to and linger in, even when the weather turns.
From that corner, the view opens out across a large, spacious green area. Perfectly mowed grass rolls away from the patio, broken up by a selection of pretty flowers and trees that bring colour, scent and a sense of the changing seasons to the edges of the lawn. The contrast is somewhat magical, making the whole composition work. You have somewhere to retreat to, and somewhere to look out at. Somewhere defined, and somewhere expansive.
In this Beaconsfield home, our clients didn’t just want an outdoor kitchen. They wanted a piece of their home that was lived outside. What they have now is exactly that: a luxurious, laidback, beautifully made extension of the house, ready for the next decade of long lunches, lazy evenings and everything in between.
Related blogs:
Complete your Outdoor Kitchen with a Big Green Egg
The Top 10 Must-Have Features to Put in Your Outdoor Kitchen
Designing an Outdoor Kitchen with Zones for Cooking, Dining & Entertaining
If you’re thinking about creating your own outdoor kitchen, we’d love to help bring it to life. At Planet Furniture, we design and build outdoor kitchens with the same care, craftsmanship and considered detail as the kitchens inside the home, tailored entirely around how you want to live, cook and entertain in your garden. Get in touch to start the conversation, and we’ll guide you from the very first sketch to the moment you fire up the BBQ for the first time.
