Help in choosing Kitchen Appliances

I'm a huge fan of Bosch, and after having dabbled with a few brands over the years, have installed them in several houses now (BTW, surprised you haven’t included a Bosch dishwasher in your list). Only Bosch appliance I ever regretted was a refrigerator, so most recently have bought Fisher & Paykel for our main and wine fridge. That said, most of the well known brands are good, and as long as you are not opting for the lowest tier in their collections (which tend to be built to meet a price specification) you should be OK.

My only major suggestions to you would be as follows:

* For normal cooking, consider induction cooktops over gas. Induction is fast and super controllable…and you can always create your own electricity, but never your own fossil fuels. For wok cooking, though, gas still seems to work best.
* Consider energy and water usage, as these will add up over the life of the appliance.
* Warranty is important, but most things that are going to fail, do so early. So, either stick with the default, or if you extend, extend as long as you can (like six years plus if you can get it), because then you might get a new appliance for free at the end of it's life. That said, this is less important for major appliances that should give you 10 years service, and more so for smaller appliances.

With rangehoods, the two major operating factors are power and noise. Nothing worse than a wimpy rangehood that also roars over the music you are playing or the conversation with guests while you are cooking. We opted for Qasair.

Dark appliances can be nice, but as a friend of mine who kitted his entire kitchen in black appliances found, your choice can be limited. Therefore, you might be trading off performance and/or efficiency just because you are trying to achieve a certain look. The most common colours are white and brushed steel, so it follows that you will get most variety with those colours too.

Lastly, sales mean nothing - not even with Appliances Online (I have bought from them numerous times…but also not bought from them too). If you are buying a package of appliance: negotiate, negotiate, negotiate; get quotes from at least three resellers; and play them off against each other. I guarantee you will get a better deal than just accepting the sales prices available at any point in time. Also, remember that everything has value and everything is negotiable - extended warranty, delivery, thrown in accessories, extras - everything!

[quote="wildrain"]I really wanted induction but my wife prefers gas so had to compromise /quote]

Show this to your wife. Cooking sizzling steaks on high heat and catching the splatter on tea towels that will be just thrown in the wash. You could never do that with gas because the tea towels would catch fire. On top of that, the cooktop is just one flat pane of glass, so no fiddly trivets or burners to clean.

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Damn, that looks amazing. For now, she wants the gas cooktop but she agreed to change it later to induction once she gets the hang of it (I am planning to get a single induction plate for testing).