New kitchen advice please anyone.

Just one piece of advice. Don’t go to Wickes. They installed my kitchen three years ago and there was supposedly a guarantee of ten years. Two fairly easily fixed problems arose after 15 months and I eventually had to threaten them with trading standards to get them to come and fix them. Don’t get me wrong, the quality is lovely and I had no problems with installation, which was quick and clean. But their guarantee isn’t worth the paper it’s written on and their customer services procedures are chaotic.

Have an air venting induction hob instead of a hood as well as lots of hidden electric and usb sockets. Pull down shelves for high cupboards.

We considered a steam oven as the kitchen shop wanted us to have one but I decided a microwave was more use and my oven does everything. All our stuff is Miele - very expensive but the kitchen is now 12 years old and good as new.
We found it easier to go to a one stop shop where they designed, fitted etc.
It was probably a lot more expensive but I am thrilled with the design of ours.

We have a quartz white with grey flecked top with up lifts so no tiles, grey and white shiny cupboards but we do have handles as I find the push doors mark easily.
Our kitchen is 12 years old and hasn't dated and looks as good as new.

Eye level oven , drawers instead of cupboards , matte finish . No gap at the top of cupboards , take them up to the ceiling, no dust/grease trap there

Dragonfly, we've been looking at cookers today and saw a steam one. I was just coming back to ask if anyone had one and whether they liked it.

We had ours done recently and decided against the pull out/rotating units in the corner cupboards after I helped a friend move and spent ages trying to get all the little bits out that had dropped through the racks over the years and hid at the back. She said they were a real pain to keep clean as so hard to reach round the racking.
We love having the huge space in the corner cupboards now to store larger items and appliances.
Also agree with the drawers and the bin cupboard.
We do have some wall units but it’s a large room and can take them.
We got all our appliances separately, lots of shopping around and multi purchase deals.

The people who did our kitchen gave us a demonstration of a steam oven and made some pastries which were soggy. We were not impressed. I think also it is a completely different way of cooking and I decided even 12 years ago I was too old to change ?

We had a water softener installed under the sink unit; it is one of the best things we ever bought. We also opted for handleless gloss units which are so easy to clean and we also had a flexible tap, it is so useful when cleaning vegetables and when rinsing around the sink. Because we have two large windows in the kitchen there wasn’t room for a lot of sockets on the walls so we had a tower of sockets that you pull up out of the work surface. We had two plans and estimates, one from Wickes and the other from an independent family business and opted for the latter because even though Wickes had a discounted offer the price was very similar and Wickes seemed to overcharge for a sink and a double oven, the independent company supplied these things at cost price.