Hey design-lovers,

You might already know that I have a particular interest in Japanese design. Lots of our kitchen, furniture and cabinetry projects are influenced by Japan’s amazing craft culture, and we include many details, motifs and references in our work that are inspired by Japanese architecture and interiors. For this reason, it may not be a surprise to hear that we get the following question quite regularly…..

‘We love Japanese design. How do we capture that calm, quiet, natural quality in our new kitchen…?’

This is a great question, and it’s one we ask ourselves, too. We want to create beautiful, rich, authentic projects. Like you, we have no interest in slavish copies or pastiche.

So, I’ve put together a list of 5 ways we’ve incorporated Japanese design into our projects, I hope it helps to spark inspiration for your own kitchen or interior…..

1: Light boxes (with Japanese washi paper)

A really important feature of Japanese design is the control of light. Downlights are really not going to work for this. The light needs to be soft and shielded, to create an atmosphere that has brightness and shade reminiscent of a Japanese tea house.

We’ve found the best way to achieve this is through light boxes. We make a few different types of light box, depending on the project and what works best for the space and design. In our Furniture Maker’s Kitchen, we made a set of 3 bookshelf boxes that emit light front and back. These are placed on the truss that bridges across the space, and work particularly will with the planting and ceramics that sit on the shelves around them. In other projects, we’ve mounted light boxes on the ceiling, or hung light boxes with plant shelves on thin steel cable, which looks really fantastic.

To diffuse the light, we add sheets of Japanese washi paper behind the glass. This is a type of rice paper that not only creates a beautiful soft glow of light, but you also get to see the flecks and strands inside the paper. It makes for an unusual, beautiful, Japanese-inspired detail that makes your space feel inviting, warm and intimate.

2: Slim slats

We developed one of our signature details - thin, repeating slats - for a very special Japanese-inspired project called Saitama Kitchen. Rejina, the client, had lived in Japan, and wanted to bring some of the detailing into her home. What was special about the design was that it included open slats, that allow a view through, and closed slats that are backed by a panel and create texture and shadow.

We make the slats in solid hardwood, so they contain a more varied range of natural colours and tones. This helps to avoid the monotony that can exist in off-the-shelf cabinetry.We now include this detail in many of our projects, where it adds a level of articulation and crafted interest that’s often a favourite detail for our clients.

3: Celebrating natural timber

If there’s one thing the Japanese do better than anyone else, it’s wood - their timber selection, craftsmanship, and detailing is unmatched. There’s a subtle skill in using natural wood in a way that celebrates its organic tones without straying into the county-cottage end of woodwork.

We love to use top-quality British and European timbers to make our kitchen projects and we’ve found that finishing the timber in a special ultra-matt lacquer helps to preserve the intrinsic qualities of the wood, whilst avoiding that plasticky feel of shiny or thick coatings. The nice thing is that though the wood feels very natural, almost raw in appearance, it retains our top-end resistance to moisture, scratches and staining.

4: Articulating the joints

Japanese woodwork is synonymous with the highest quality of craftsmanship, which this can often be seen in the articulation of joints and the detailing around connections. It’s a subject close to my own heart, as I’ve been making traditionally jointed furniture since I was a teenager.

In our kitchen and furniture projects, we tend to employ a less-is-more approach to exposed jointing as we find this channels that calm, subtle, Japanese aesthetic better than the more overt jointing of, say, British Arts & Crafts.

One of my favourite articulations is the island leg in our Saitama Kitchen. It’s made up of 4 narrow columns that are intersected by cross members at the top and bottom. It was a really tricky thing to detail, but the result is quite lovely.  

5: Plants and foliage

Japanese interiors are designed as part of a continuum between inside and outside. This combination of interior spaces connected to curated gardens is an attempt to bring harmony between our busy external lives and our centring in homelife, family, and nature.

If you’ve travelled to Japan, you may have seen this concept in action in the extraordinary tea houses, temples, and residences that sit within manicured gardens. What is created is an internal space with vistas out to nature, and a garden with foliage-framed paths leading to inviting entrances and interiors.

In our kitchen projects, we work hard to bring nature inside by making specific zones for plants to sit. Sometimes this is on our lightboxes, so that hanging vines can create interest and texture at height. Other times, we make larger plant shelves above cabinetry - we call this a ‘green storey’. We’ve even set a planter into a stone backsplash, so fresh herbs can be picked whilst cooking.

Plants help to create that beautiful Japanese aesthetic essence by contrasting with the other materials in our homes - wood, stone, glass etc. In so doing, the intrinsic richness of both nature and crafted materials is elevated.

I hope this has been an interesting dive into some of the practical ways we bring Japanese inspiration into our crafted contemporary kitchen projects. If you have questions, comments or dissents, get in touch – you can reach me direct at hugh@hmillerbros.co.uk.

Cheers

Hugh

p.s. You might be wondering about my experience in Japanese design and woodwork. Well, I travelled to Japan as a Churchill Fellow in 2015, and wrote a book about Japanese wood craftsmanship. You can see the full text here...