Italian Kitchen Brands Combine Design Flair With Cooking Knowhow — These Are the 9 to Know

We all know the Italians know their way around a kitchen, but I'm not just talking about cooking. You might not know it, but many of the world's most premium luxury kitchens are made by Italian kitchen brands, bringing a level of craft to contemporary spaces.

I think it's fair to say that these Italian design companies exist within a certain design vernacular — though that's not to say their offerings are homogeneous. It's just that, on the whole, the Italian brands that retail their designs across the glove tend to focus on modern, sleek design, innovative materials, and quality finishings in particular.

But that's not the only thing you need to know about them. To help you decipher the world of Italian kitchens, I've put in the legwork — I consider myself a kitchen expert, and there was plenty I didn't know about Italian kitchens either until writing this feature. I've spoken to the Italian experts about what makes their kitchens so special, and even got hands on with some of these brands' latest and greatest ranges at showrooms in Milan and in the UK (and all over, in fact).

So, here's the lowdown on the best kitchen brands from Italy I think you should get acquainted with — these are the kitchen makers to know, rather than appliances and so forth. From style and price, to how you actually go about getting one, here's the secret to living la dolce vita when it comes to your kitchen renovation.

What Makes Italian Kitchens Special?

Part of the allure of these kitchen brands is in the culture of the Italian design. "Italian kitchens reflect the essence of Italian living: warm, inviting, and centered on the joy of sharing moments with others," George Khachfe of Poliform explains. "Conviviality is a key to Italian way of living."

"In Italian homes, the kitchen is the heart of the house, a vibrant gathering space where life unfolds through moments of connection and conviviality," echoes Italian kitchen brand Valcucine. "Italian kitchen design reflects this ethos, emphasizing functionality and beauty in equal measure. Central to the concept are the preparation, washing, and cooking areas, which are planned to enhance efficiency and comfort. The island, a signature element, becomes a focal point, seamlessly blending practicality with social interaction, inviting friends and family to share in the culinary experience."

It echoes through into the materiality of these designs. "The key principles include using premium-quality materials, meticulous craftsmanship, and timeless aesthetics," explains Manfredi Conforzi, commercial director of Officine Gullo. "These elements combine to create kitchens that are both visually stunning and highly functional, offering inviting, versatile environments that seamlessly integrate beauty and practicality."

The secret to the quality of Italian kitchens isn't just in what they're made from, but how and where they're made. "Many Italian kitchen manufacturers are based in the Brianza Furniture District, between Milan and Como," Roberto Gavazzi, CEO and President of Boffi, tells me on a phone call. "It's where many of the most prestigious Italian furniture brands, including B&B Italia and Poliform, are headquartered." What this means is that Brianza is a readymade workforce of expert craftspeople who have been making furniture and kitchens for generations, as well as putting them in a creative heartland where they can work in close proximity to subcontractors (think worktops and other material finishes) to collaborate on exciting innovations.

1. Aran Cucine

ARAN Cucine is an Italian kitchen brand that designs both super edgy, contemporary kitchens and more traditional Italian farmhouse-style designs. In its modern range, cool curves, polished surfaces and design-forward timber finishes set the tone, while panelled, sometimes decorative doors fall onto the more classic offering.

Its boldest, most innovative offerings sit under the moniker Modulo 13, a collection of designs that play with exciting materials, layouts, storage ideas, and more. The Oasi, for example, is a kitchen which incorporates planting units in the worktop, including the capacity to have a tree growing from your kitchen island, which it displayed at Milan Design Week several years ago.

The highlight: Luce, designed with Studio Marco Piva, is a relatively new design that combines textured door front options with recessed lighting strips that sit between units, offering a bold exciting new kitchen lighting idea.

2. Boffi

This premium Italian kitchen brand has global appeal — it has over 35 flagship showrooms around the globe, and more destinations through approved dealers. In the UK, it's an impressive multi-storey showroom in London's Chelsea, a showcase space for not only Boffi's kitchen designs, but its sister brands De Pavoda, for furniture, and ADL, for interior glass door ideas. After all, Boffi's philosophy is all about how the kitchen exists as part of, and interacts with, the wider home, so it makes sense to showcase alongside stylish Italian made furniture and doors.

"Boffi is all about creating that warm, pleasant feeling you want for collective eating moments," president Roberto Gavazzi tells me, "but it's underpinned by a technical excellence that you notice when it counts."

What does the brand do best? "We're very good in adapting new materials, outside of the typical materials you see in kitchens," Roberto says. "These are new ways to use very special finishes — think stone, lacquer, ceramics, metal." The design company deals in ranges, but as Roberto explains, there's the option of customization to such an extent, including integrating between the ranges, that no two Boffi kitchens are ever the same.

Head to the Boffi showroom and you'll meet with one of its designers — in London, it's likely you'll be dealing with someone who has undergone a rigorous training regime in the brand's Italian 'academy'. Boffi is a luxury product — kitchens start from £100,000 the brand tells me.

The highlight: Designed by Piero Lissoni, the Novanti kitchen system is a spectacular showcase of the Italian kitchen brand's modern aesthetic and ingenuity with materials, especially through the sculptural stainless steel island 'floating' on recessed plinth.

3. Cesar

Visiting Cesar's showroom in Milan earlier this year introduced me to modern kitchen ideas I'd never seen before. Again, it's down to clever materiality, but what sets Cesar apart is its approach to decorative finishes that bring a beauty and elegance to the sleek lines of Italian kitchen design.

The image, above, from said showroom showcases a couple of such ideas. The brand's curvaceous Tangram system is shown here with the Groove door, an intricately-detailed, irregularly fluted design that hides door joins effortlessly. Crowning this unique island is one of its newer ideas: the Nuance glass worktop, which features a subtle ombre across the surface — a truly hypnotic finish. And that's just one kitchen island.

It's a name that ensures Italian kitchen brands are up there with the best when it comes to innovation. " Over the last 25 years, big investments in production technology have made it possible for them to bring this level of design and engineering to a much wider audience," Andrew Hamilton Barr, director of Espresso Design, a kitchen studio which designs with Cesar's ranges. "The way Italian production works reminds me of the car industry’s supply chain. There’s a whole network of small, specialized companies — mostly in northern Italy — that create everything from unique veneers to lacquering and hardware. It’s this collaboration that makes Italian products stand out."

Cesar has a number of design partners in the UK you can source its kitchens from, but it also now has a monobrand store in London's Chelsea Harbor, created by one of its retailers, Espresso Design.

The highlight: I'd consider the Tangram a modern design classic, and it's an adaptable system that can create all kinds of sinuous shapes, for statement islands as well as runs of wall cabinetry.

4. Modulnova

Italian kitchen brand Modulnova has one outlet in England through Designspace London, and another in Belfast in Workshop. "We offer some very unique kitchen door styles," Chris Etheridge of Designspace London, which all retails Italian kitchen brands Lema and San Giacomo, tells me. "One of our best sellers is our Modulnova Frame range, which features a framed door made from a 10mm solid wood outer frame, and a veneered internal panel with an aluminium honeycomb core. This door style is a modern take on a traditional style framed door which is a very on-trend look at the moment."

On form for an Italian kitchen company, Modulnova's ranges allow for a sleekness, while streamlining materiality that allows for minimalist interior design that, thanks to rich natural materials, has an inherent warmth.

Modulnova kitchens are manufactured in the north of Venice in Italy, and the brand prides itself on using local suppliers in the area for the raw materials as well as specialist finishes in metal and woodwork.

The highlight: Modulnova's Blade and Blade Lab ranges are made from natural stone, carved with horizontal fluting. "Having fronts in stone allows us to match the worktop to the door finish; creating beautiful monolithic designs," Chris explains.

5. Dada by Molteni&C

Molteni&C works with established designers to create its modern kitchen ranges, including contemporary Italian greats such as Luca Meda, Dante Bonuccelli, and Ferruccio Lavian. However, superstar architect Vincent Van Duysen has also been the creative director for Molteni&C's kitchen sub-brand, Dada, since 2016, so you'll find a number of ranges attributed to the designer, too.

Like other Italian kitchen brands, Dada has a very specific aesthetic incorporating luxe modernism with great materials, integrated lighting and innovative storage. Interesting, statement-making wall storage, in particular, is part of this brand's DNA. You can visit its showroom on Brompton Road in London, to see its kitchens up close.

The highlight: The Vincent Van Duysen designed VVD had some new features for 2024, including a new incredible marble cooktop.

6. Officine Gullo

Officine Gullo stands apart in a list of Italian kitchen brands for its distinct design personality. It is instantly recognizable for its standout Florentine metal detailing, used throughout its kitchen cabinetry designs (and applied to ovens, fridges, and more — it's an appliance brand too, after all), as well as the scope for a more playful use of colour. The color wall in its South Kensington showroom is the sort of thing that ignites magical kitchen design schemes, if you ask me.

But these ornamental details don't detract from the luxurious detailing you expect from Italian kitchens. "Officine Gullo specializes in crafting bespoke luxury kitchens that blend cutting-edge technology with traditional artisanal craftsmanship," Manfredi Conforzi, commercial director of Officine Gullo, explains to me. "Each kitchen is entirely customized, with a focus on design, materials, finishes, and functionality."

The highlight: The Tailor Made range is entirely customizable, allowing clients to express their unique style in every detail, from the selection of premium materials to bespoke finishes. More than just functional spaces, they are works of art designed to inspire and elevate everyday living.

7. Poliform

Starting life in the 1970s as an Italian furniture brand, Poliform began designing kitchens in 1996 with the acquisition of Varenna, a historic Italian kitchen maker, which has since been fully integrated into the Poliform identity. Today, Poliform offers eight kitchen models, ranging from Artex Pro — a kitchen system with a contemporary and sophisticated aesthetic, featuring design elements such as a tapered top that doubles as a snack table and the use of rare fossil elm wood — to Shape, which reinvents the concept of handle openings with its recessed profile, combining modern design with functionality.

"Entirely made in Italy, our kitchen systems uphold the highest standards of quality, ensuring meticulous attention to detail at every stage," George Khachfe, chairman of Poliform UK, tells me, "from material selection to the pursuit of reliability, safety, and durability."

With two London showrooms, on on Kings Road, and one on London's kitchen showroom haven Wigmore Street, you can explore these kitchen ranges, as well as see how they fit into the wider picture of your home alongside Poliform's furniture and decor offering. "Each showroom has a dedicated kitchen division with designers specialising exclusively in kitchens," George says. "Part of the retail team, they collaborate with interior designers, architects, and end clients to create kitchen solutions. The journey begins by selecting the right kitchen model, followed by personalising every detail to suit the client’s unique needs and style."

The highlight: I was particularly drawn to the Phoenix kitchen, pictured above, when scoping out the Poliform showroom on London's Kings Road, in Black Elm with a beautifully modern steel kitchen island.

8. Scavolini

I spent a lot of time on the stand of Italian kitchen brand Scavolini at EuroCucina in Milan in 2024 — there was a lot to see. It's a design brand that covers a wide spectrum, and a little more unusually for an Italian brand, it spans traditional and contemporary styles. I'd categorize the more modern styles as having a touch of the industrial to them, especially in ranges such as the collaboration with Italian fashion brand Diesel. These ranges include materials like aluminium, reeded glass, metal mesh, and open rack shelving.

Other modern styles in the brand's collection are classically sleek and polished for Italian design, while the more traditional paneled doors still have some intriguing design elements that give them a twist on the ordinary.

Scavolini retails through a number of kitchen design studios in the UK, including Multiliving, which has a dedicated monobrand store in London's West Hampstead.

The highlight: My favorite from EuroCucina was the newly launched Poetica range, designed with Vuesse. A modern take on a paneled door made from ash with recessed handles mixes the classic with the contemporary, while an impressive island introduces a shapely circular kitchen island seating idea.

9. Valcucine

I like Valcucine as a brand as it hangs its hat, design-wise, on some big but practical kitchen storage ideas. Its 'Genius Loci' design has a small drawer running around the worktop around the entire kitchen, for example — a dramatic design detail, and a new way of arranging storage. Another example is its Logica series, which conceals the kitchen clutter behind a back panel on the worktop, keeping everything you need to hand, but allowing you to streamline and remove clutter from your surfaces.

Talking to a designer at Valcucine, I was struck by the brand's dedication to 'ergonomics' as part of its design philosophy. "Valcucine has developed numerous studies - well ahead of the times - analysing how traditional kitchens were used and studying the feedback of dealers and interior decorators," the designer explains. "Perfect interaction with kitchen cabinets increases their usefulness and performance, and makes using them a better experience. That's why we've reinvented kitchen ergonomics, planning new experiences through the use of 'Special Elements' such as the Aerius Wall Unit, New Logica, Air Logica, V-Motion, Logica Theca and Logica Celata.

There's a dedicated Valcucine showroom on Finchley Road, Hampstead, in London, and a small network of other design studios in the UK.

The highlight: Its tower units with 'receding' (what we'd call pocket) doors has an illuminated back panel inside. It's practical for gently illuminating the space, but it's just generally impressive, too.

What's the Biggest Italian Kitchen Brand?

According to statistics released in 2024 by Statista, the Italian kitchen company with the highest turnover in 2017, making 215 million Euros.

Needless to say, Italian kitchens aren't just for the Italians. They're pervasive throughout the design scene around the world, and the UK is no exception. Thankfully, that means you don't have to lust over the Italian aesthetic from afar, just look up your local showroom.