Celebrating20 Years of Sola Kitchens — From a Garden Studio to London's Most Celebrated Kitchen

A Story of Craft, Conviction & Scandinavian Soul

There is a particular kind of courage in leaving a career behind for a conviction. In 2006, Sofia Bune Strandh, a Swedish-born solicitor, new Londoner, and a woman who simply could not find the kitchen she wanted, made exactly that leap. Unable to source a kitchen of the quality and
purity she knew from her native Scandinavia, she designed one herself and had it built in Sweden. The response was immediate.

Before the cabinetry had even settled, friends were asking if she could do the same for them. Sola Kitchens was born not from a business plan, but from a gap in the market that only someone with Sofia's particular background could see and the taste to fill it beautifully.

Twenty years on, Sola Kitchens stands as the only company in Britain offering truly bespoke Scandinavian-style kitchens, handcrafted by skilled artisans in workshops across Sweden and Britain. With three London showrooms, Wigmore Street, Hampstead, and Fulham, multiple design awards, and a client list that spans the most sought-after postcodes in the city, the company has become a quiet authority in the prime residential market.

What follows is the story of how it got there: the setbacks, the pivots, the milestones that shaped a studio into a house of craft.

The Founder

Sofia's origin story is, in its own way, a perfect metaphor for the company she would build: a refusal to compromise and the discipline to do something about it. When she moved to London and renovated her first flat, she found the British kitchen market either too utilitarian or too ornate, nowhere near the elegant restraint and the functionality of the Scandinavian homes she had grown up in.

She wanted her kitchen designs to be completely bespoke and handcrafted, with attention to the finest details, following traditional Scandinavian manufacturing techniques, and a focus on materiality between wood, stone, and paint.

Sofia began the company part-time in 2006, working from a shed at the bottom of her garden, kitted out with two small kitchen displays, a library of sample doors, a desk, and a dog. By 2008, she resigned from law entirely to commit to Sola full-time. The timing, as she has recounted, was bracing: one week after she went full-time, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the financial crisis began. The garden studio became a refuge rather than a launchpad. But Sofia held her nerve, and the years that followed would prove that her conviction was well-placed.

The Journey

Two Decades, Three Showrooms, One Vision.

• 2006 - The Beginning

Sofia founded Sola Kitchens from a garden studio in London, drawing on her Swedish upbringing to offer what no British company could: genuinely bespoke Scandinavian cabinetry.

• 2008 - Full Commitment & a Crisis

Sofia leaves her law career. Days later, the global financial crisis begins. Rather than retreat, she uses the quieter market to deepen craft standards and build client relationships.

• 2011 - First Showroom Opens

The Fulham showroom on Munster Road opens its doors. Sola's first permanent home, still operating today.

• 2016 - Hampstead Expands The Reach

A second showroom opens in Hampstead village, extending Sola's presence into North London's most design-conscious community.

• 2018 - First Design Award

Head of Design Rhiannon Phenis wins Designer of the Year, with a kitchen in antique brass and concrete grey that signals Sola's arrival as a design-led force.

• 2020 - Skog Launches a Trend

The Skog signature style, with slim vertical wood slats individually routed into the panel, launches quietly and proceeds to define a decade of textured cabinetry across the industry.

• 2022 - The Flagship on Wigmore Street

After a ten-month renovation, the Wigmore Street showroom opens, a long-held ambition realised. Within a year, it was officially named the most beautiful kitchen showroom in the UK and won several industry awards for best showroom of the year.

• 2025 - Gerakas, a Cross-Cultural Signature

In collaboration with Miaki, the Gerakas collection launches, uniting Aegean warmth with Scandinavian restraint in a quietly expressive new direction.

• 2026 - Twenty Years

Sola Kitchens marks two decades of bespoke craftsmanship, with three showrooms, a growing portfolio of award-winning projects, and an unwavering commitment to the values that started it all.

Core Values - The Principles That Never Changed

What distinguishes Sola Kitchens in the super-prime sector is not simply the quality of the cabinetry, though that quality is exceptional, but the coherence of the values underpinning every project. In a market where luxury is often performed, Sola's version is rooted in craft logic.

01 True bespoke
Every kitchen is designed from first principles. No standard carcass sizes, no off-the-shelf modules. The brief, the space, the client's way of living, these determine the outcome, not a catalogue.

02 Handcrafted in Scandinavia & Britain
Cabinetry is made by hand in workshops in Sweden and Britain. Traditional joinery techniques, individual routing, solid timber construction, the methods that guarantee longevity over novelty.

03 Small enough to care
With a team of over 20 specialists, designers, technical leads, procurement, and installation managers, Sola delivers at complex scale whilst maintaining the personal contact that distinguishes genuine luxury from mere expense.

04 Built to last a lifetime
Informed by the Scandinavian philosophy that a home, and its kitchen, should be purchased once and kept for life, sustainability at Sola means longevity: FSC-certified timbers, minimal waste, and cabinetry that ages with grace.

What Twenty Years Means to You

In the prime residential sector, the kitchen is no longer a functional afterthought. It is a room that architects, interior designers, and discerning clients treat with the same seriousness as the art on the walls, because it is, at its finest, a work of applied craft. Sola Kitchens has spent two
decades building the capability to operate at that level: the technical expertise to handle projects shortlisted for the International Design & Architecture Awards, the relational intelligence to work alongside the best architects and contractors in London, and the creative confidence to forge collaborations that push the form forward, as with Havwoods on the Ström
collection, or Miaki on Gerakas.

For architects and interior designers working at the highest level of the market, what Sola offers is rare: a partner with a coherent design language, the technical resource to execute complex briefs flawlessly, and the institutional patience to see a project through from first sketch to snagging and beyond. Kitchens that are still being praised over 10 years after installation. Clients who return, again and again, not because they have to, but because they choose to.

Twenty years in, the shed in the garden feels like a long time ago. And yet the impulse that began it all, the refusal to settle for a kitchen that was anything less than perfect, remains the truest thing about Sola Kitchens