Leonie Pauls about timeless kitchen planning
A kitchen that lasts and delights
A new kitchen is a decision for many years to come. While trends come and go, a kitchen should continue to impress long into the future: it should be functional, aesthetically pleasing and suited to your lifestyle. But how do you create a timeless kitchen design?
Some decisions take years to mature. For Leonie Pauls, the story of her next125 kitchen began back in 2023. As part of an exhibition, she worked with a next125 kitchen for the first time and explored the brand’s design, materials and distinctive formal language. The kitchen disappeared again after the exhibition, but her enthusiasm for it remained.
In the years that followed, the idea of having her own next125 kitchen resurfaced time and again. Not as a concrete plan, but as a vision of what a kitchen would need to look like to inspire for years to come. When she bought her mid-century house, this idea finally became a reality. Yet rather than making a spontaneous decision, she embarked on a planning process shaped by one central question:
How do you design a kitchen that will still delight you years later?
Anyone planning a kitchen is quickly confronted with the latest trends. Colours, materials and finishes change with the seasons. Yet while interior trends come and go, a kitchen often remains part of the home for many years. This makes it all the more important not to focus solely on what is currently fashionable when planning a kitchen, but on what will suit your own life in the long term.
Leonie’s renovated mid-century house set the direction and became the starting point for every decision. Architecture, spatial character and personal preferences were at the heart of the planning process. The aim was not to copy the house’s original style, but to reinterpret it in a contemporary way.
The clear proportions of the next125 kitchen, based on a 125 mm grid, made it possible to create a design that blends harmoniously with the architecture of the house and echoes its design concept. This allowed the original mid-century character to be reimagined: modern, functional and crafted from high-quality materials.
This is precisely where an important principle of a timeless kitchen lies: the better it suits the character of the people and the architecture, the longer it will feel right. A carefully considered kitchen design therefore takes its cues from your own style of living and personal preferences.
Choose materials with character
For her next125 kitchen, Leonie chose a combination of warm walnut, elegant Glass fronts and dark accents in Onyx black. The material concept is complemented by the Systemo Ceramic worktop in Bianco beige. Together, these elements create an atmosphere that feels modern, elegant and timeless.
For Leonie, it was next125’s fluted fronts that had inspired her from her very first encounter with the brand. Their fine texture creates a lively interplay of light and shadow, giving the fronts depth without appearing obtrusive.
Materials determine not only how a kitchen looks, but also how it feels over the long term. Natural materials such as wood or Ceramic retain their premium, contemporary appeal even after many years. That is precisely why they are such a popular choice. The wood brings warmth to the room, while Glass creates a calm and pleasing look. The Ceramic worktop impresses with its combination of stylish appearance, robustness and durability. The material palette fits naturally into the architecture of the house and highlights its mid-century character without copying it.
Think of the kitchen as part of the living space
Expectations of kitchens have changed. Today, the kitchen is more than a workspace. It is a meeting place, a space for communication and the centre of everyday life. This makes it all the more important to consider the kitchen as part of the entire living space.
This idea also played a central role for Leonie. The new kitchen needed to blend harmoniously into the open areas of her home. Materials, colours and proportions were therefore chosen to create a consistent sense of space throughout.
The result is a kitchen-living space that is not only functional, but also shapes the atmosphere of the entire house. It creates seamless transitions between cooking, living and everyday life.
To ensure the kitchen is perceived as part of the living space, next125 offers solutions that create a seamless transition between kitchen and living areas. These include, for example, the pocket system, which allows the kitchen to disappear behind large doors when required, and the new highboard, which combines storage space with the appearance of a designer piece of furniture.
Choose for today, but think of tomorrow
A kitchen should not only impress today. It should still suit your home many years from now. That is why it is worth choosing timeless design, high-quality materials and lasting quality when planning a kitchen.
For Leonie Pauls, this was precisely what mattered. The design of her next125 kitchen is guided by her personal living style and the architecture of her home. The result is a kitchen that blends in harmoniously while retaining the flexibility to evolve with the lives of its residents.
After all, a timeless kitchen is not defined by attracting as much attention as possible, but by continuing to inspire just as much years later as it did on the very first day.
