Natural materials meet gentle hues to create a serenely beautiful, minimalist kitchen for this family of six, KBB journo Amelia Thorpe discovers…
After moving from London to Bath three years ago, Jill Gandee Coulter and husband Christian settled into a rental property with their family while they began to search for a house to buy. “Eventually, we found this elegant Georgian house, offering sweeping views of Bath and within easy walking distance to both the city centre and our children’s schools,” says Jill.
Built of mellow Bath stone, the five-bedroom, semidetached house with garden presented the ideal setting for life with their four children. “The house has beautiful bones, but the decoration was busy and in need of updating,” explains Jill, who runs her photography-design-styling company Studio Coulter, while Christian works in finance.
Both American-born, they share a love of light and space, so their vision was to strip back the décor to a minimal palette of warm neutrals, seeking to create a sense of quiet luxury. “By introducing a restrained aesthetic, the refined Georgian architecture becomes the focus, highlighted by the natural light in each of the rooms, thanks to the large-scale original windows,” she says.
The minimalist kitchen design
Chief amongst the challenges was the kitchen on the lower ground floor of the four-storey house, destined to become the heart of their busy family life. “The space we inherited felt crowded and unbalanced, with an overly large dining table in the middle of the room and a small island,” says Jill. “The objective was to organise this space to work efficiently, while ushering in a calm character to the hardest-working room in the house.”
As her vision began to take shape, Jill followed up recommendations to meet three bespoke kitchen companies, before settling on Irving Sykes. “I met director Nick Sykes, liked him immediately and decided to trust in that instinct – and I haven’t regretted it for a moment,” she says. “Nick is brilliant to work with, always positive and happy to work out solutions to any challenges, plus he’s a perfectionist, so I had complete trust in the quality of the product he would deliver.”
Leaning into a refined minimalist style with quiet textural tones, Jill worked with Nick to bring this vision to life in the kitchen. First came the layout, with a large island – scaled to suit a family of six – forming the centrepiece of the room. A sweep of tall cabinetry houses a generous larder and coffee cupboard, as well as providing ample storage and an integrated fridge-freezer.
The materials
To achieve the quiet beauty required, Nick proposed solid ash cabinetry finished with a white pigment, all made by hand at the Irving Sykes workshop in Bristol. “The pigment is applied with a brush, then rubbed into the grain for a subtle, opaque result, then finished with a protective layer of matt lacquer,” he explains. The door style is handleless, clean-lined, and contemporary, with a slender mitred detail around the edge of each door, and a finger pull at the top of each panel.
Sculptural in form and conceived like a piece of fine furniture, the island is the focal point of the room, wrapped in fluted travertine. “We made a strong ply shell to support the weight of the fluted stone, which was applied on site, because it would have been too heavy to transport without damage,” says Nick. Curved detailing softens the look of the structure, emphasising the easy sense of flow around the room, while a brushed stainless steel plinth almost disappears from view to make the island appear as if floating.
Choosing the statement mable
Against the neutral palette of the minimalist kitchen, the Arabescato marble worktops and splashback introduce a graphic visual contrast. “The marble floating shelf forms the backdrop for the room, offering a display space for objects of both beautiful form and function,” says Jill. “I went all over the South-West, visiting countless marble yards in search of the right stone – one with a balance of dramatic veining and negative space, with enough warmth to complement the adjacent materials.”
Marble is more porous and requires more upkeep than many of the manmade composites, but Jill chose it for its character. “I love its natural imperfections and ability to change with the light,” she says.
Making for a clever final touch, a sliding door in the marble splashback opens to reveal a hidden storage compartment. “We were keen to use what would otherwise have been wasted space in this corner, and Nick was able to make a discreet stone-clad panel which slides open on runners,” says Jill. “It is perfect for hiding chargers and small appliances that we use regularly, so as not to detract from the serene character of the space.”
Photography: Leighton James, The Property Photographer
This house tour was featured in the February 2026 issue of Kitchens Bedrooms & Bathrooms magazine.
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