Big curved islands are trendy at the moment- and I'm all in favour - although you need a fairly healthy budget to include one in your kitchen. Perhaps big curves will move downmarket, in the same way as little curved end doors did. If you have a big curve, though, can you still put your sink on the island?

Well you can if you use a Barazza sink. I saw the one above in the ASL showroom in Northampton, fitted into a Metris display - and very impressive it looked too. Of course you could always choose a tap that wasn't quite so much "in your face" ... if you wanted your sink to be a bit less obvious. One very smart feature of the sink is that it's flush mounted into a quartz composite worktop. That makes it look particularly neat (although it can also be surface mounted).

I love really good looking stainless steel sinks - because they're so practical. I would always encourage someone going for a solid surface worktop to have a steel sink, rather than an integral, solid surface one.

Even market leader Corian^® say in their Use and Care Guide: "Pouring boiling liquids directly into sinks without turning on the cold tap may damage your Corian". What use is that? A kitchen sink where you can't drain the boiling water from your vegetables. Of course, if the seamless appearance of the sink is your main priority - then you'll just have to be careful - run that cold tap and waste some water!

Getting back to Barazza, though ... they're a family company based in Italy, making ovens, hobs and sinks from very high quality stainless steel (Aisi 304 with a high level of chrome and nickel). They also undertake made to measure projects, integrating sinks and hobs into stainless steel worktops. The sinks and hobs are widely available in this country, via importer Euroline, and any kitchen showroom should be able to get hold of them.

The curved sinks come from the Barazza Tao range and there are a number of different designs. You can have circular bowls with a little drainer each side:

Or, if you want curves - but in a straight worktop - you can have that too:

Prefer to have the hob on your big curved island, rather than the sink? Barazza can help there too:

The sizes, for both sinks and hobs, are either 900 or 1200mm wide, so there's a smaller 900mm curved hob with three rings and - as for the sinks - there are curvy versions that can be fitted into straight worktops. here's the smaller version:

Barazza's curvy sinks and hobs aren't new but I hadn't realised previously how much of a choice there was in the range (there's also an oven with an oval feature on the fascia) ... so I thought they were worth a mention.