I love gas, it gives you great control, my food is so much better, less burning, better crusts on steaks... and gas and copper are increadibly fast to repond for delicate sauces - something the induction pots and pans I have used so far just can't match. Add to that, gas works when there is no electricity - a problem where I live - and is incredibly inexpensive compared to electricity. I grew up using gas, and I was soooo jealous of all my friends who had electric, until I finally got electric in my first home. it was TERRIBLE! Jealousy gone, I spent 15 years in agony in the kitchen until I could aford to go back to gas. Now, with induction, it is faster to respond than electricity, but it still requires electricity, and I'm still dealing with the learning curve. It is easier to do a wipedown from simple, non-technical cooking, but you have to be very careful, as the glass tops scratch, and are fragile and much of my beautiful cookware is useless - my heavy cast iron scratches, and can easily shatter an induction top and my lovely copper cookware doesn't work on induction. So, I vote for both. A couple of induction burners for what it does best, and using my multiply stainless steel, and for quick cleanup and gas where it excels.

Six Top Lighting Tips from Sally Storey, Creative Director The popularity of having a dressing room in one’s home has certainly grown over the past few years. Home-owners aspire to having one in their home and designers are increasingly asked for space for a dedicated dressing area. Nothing can be more luxurious than a room dedicated to dressing. Having storage for ones shoes, boots, bags and scarfs. Imagine being able to store your long and short dresses, trousers separately, and each of them having a dedicated cupboard – just like in a luxury boutique. The challenge is to get the dressing room lighting right and key to its success is to introduce layers of light. 1. Adding decorative glamour Consider adding the glamour of a pendant in the centre of your dressing room. This creates a focus and an alternative source of light to balance the directional downlight 2. Layer your lighting Create layers of light to add interest. Consider lamps on side tables for a soft intermediate light. Think about uplighting window reveals as seen here with 1w Luccas along with creating a focus over a central chest of drawers, here lit with with two Polesprings. As a final layer add a floating effect under the central drawer unit with Contour HD24. Put this on a PIR to create a nightlight if one goes through the dressing room to the bathroom at night. 3. Consider your task lighting If your dressing room also has a dressing table, you will need some excellent task lighting to ensure that you can see to put your make up on. Consider adding side lights such as these decorative pendants to provide even light either side of your face. At low level, Contour HD24 LED strip has been added to create a floating effect under the unit. 4. Light your wardrobes Simple use of downlights directing light straight down is not ideal when trying to create an intimate space such a dressing room. Consider instead directing them at the cupboards. Here a Polespring with a medium beam reflects light back off the cupboard for a softer effect. This has the added advantage of lighting the clothes when the cupboards are open too. 5. Light up your shelving The trend for open shelving in dressing rooms continues. The best way to light these is with LED Contour HD24, concealed either at the front or the back of the joinery. This gives a good focus on clothing, helping to differentiate colours and provides an alternative to a directional downlight. This solution will not only add drama to your dressing room space but will also increases the feeling of height in the room. 6. Add extra softness Another way to add an additional layer of light which adds extra softness to the space if you have cupboards do not go to the ceiling, add an uplight such as an led strip from the top. This will allow you to create a bright light for during the day or, when dimmed, a warm glow at high level.

Many thanks to all who have replied. Lots of good ideas. I am currently thinking along the lines of double downlights in the ceiling and wall lights over the worktop. I had considered a lower ceiling over the worktop as Danielle has done but with no wall at one end I thought it was going to look incomplete. It will be a couple of months before it needs to be installed.

Hmm, I might be wrong but my understanding is that a recirculating extractor doesn't get rid of steam, only grease and smells. It's confusing - I read lots about it and didn't find many definitive answers - but my understanding was that if we had a recirculating-only cooktop extractor, we would also benefit from a wall mounted expelair type extractor too, which we didn't want. Hence we went for an exhaust air model as we wanted ours to do the whole job. The bit where it ducts out has a system whereby it only opens when its extracting - and the ducting is several metres long so there's no sense of cold air coming up through the hob top, even on these recent very cold, windy and frosty days. I can only say that in my experience, if you want an island hob exhaust air model (as opposed to recirculating), there are costs which are additional to the cost of the hob itself - ie the ducting pipes and the work that goes into planning and executing the ducting under the floor and out to the open air. The position of the ducting has to be millimetre perfect at quite an early stage of the build so we had a lot of head scratching and very careful work to make sure that our kitchen plan and the position of the ducting were exactly aligned. We've paid our builder a day rate so there's definitely been an extra, if slightly undefinable, cost there. Perhaps in some cases it's very straightforward but in ours it wasn't, and as I said the ducting itself isn't cheap (around £100/m) - so in a direct comparison between a recirculating and a ducting version of the same cooktop (where the cooktops themselves cost exactly the same) the ducting one was a more expensive option for us, but one we're glad we went for. I should say we're in a 1930s house, which, although we're doing our best to make it energy efficient, is never going to be airtight like a passiv haus. So for us the benefit of getting rid of steam outweighs any potential small energy loss through the ducting to the outside. Of course everything I've said above may be rubbish... I'm just a girl trying to do a renovation with conflicting advice from all sides... :)