Small Room, Big Personality: Sauvignon Office Kitchen

We treat every brief the same way, whether it's a flagship reception or a kitchen. Sauvignon came to us needing an office breakout space, somewhere for staff to make coffee, eat lunch and have the kind of conversation that doesn't happen at a desk. It's a small room. We gave it a full brand treatment anyway.

The starting point was the palette. We built the space around warm timber and a soft pink that sits somewhere between blush and rose, paired with black detailing and brushed metal accents. It's a combination that reads as considered rather than decorative, closer to a boutique hospitality fit out than a standard office kitchen.

Geometry does a lot of the work in a room this size. Rather than treat the cabinetry and joinery as pure function, we used angled panel lines and repeated geometric motifs across the splashback and the seating nook to give the walls something to say. The shapes are simple, but they repeat with enough discipline that the room reads as one designed object rather than a collection of appliances.

Lighting was deliberately layered rather than uniform. A warm, low wash sits behind the joinery to soften the timber tones, while a brighter task layer covers the worktop and prep areas. The contrast between the two keeps the space feeling like somewhere you'd choose to sit, not just somewhere you're routed through on the way to a meeting room.

The brief was small on paper. Square metres, a kettle, some seating, a coffee machine. What actually matters in a space like this is repetition and restraint: the same three or four materials used consistently, the same geometric language carried from the floor to the joinery to the wall panelling, so a modest footprint doesn't feel like an afterthought bolted onto a bigger office fit out.

We think this is where interior design earns its keep the most. A reception space gets budget and attention because it's the first thing a visitor sees. A kitchen gets used by every member of staff, every single day, often more than any other room in the building. Giving it the same level of material and detailing thought as the flagship spaces is simply proportionate to how much the room actually gets used.

Sauvignon is a small room with a clear identity, and that was the point from the start. You can see more of our interior work, including the material and lighting approach behind projects like this one, on our interiors page.