Kitchen sinks - anyone know a good showroom within reach of Herefordshire or in London?

[suealpha]

Can anyone enthusiastically recommend a shop/showroom not too far from Herefordshire (or in London) where there's a really good display of kitchen sinks, preferably with some of them shown in a suggested context?

We’re going round in circles in trying to choose the best material and style for the sink(s) for the lovely new kitchen my OH's been working on for ages (so far doing a lot of boring but essential infrastructure stuff). In the pictures in magazines and in the displays in B&Q and Wickes for example, no one ever seems to have made robust provision for using the sink for real washing up with real water and dripping stuff needing to drain.

[BL00CowWonders]

Is it worth you having a wander round ikea? They have the kitchens set up with crockery and pans etc and you could go and have a play!

[suealpha]

Thanks for the thought, BLOOCowWonders. I'm not optimistic that I'd get any professional guidance at Ikea on the relative merits of e.g. stainless steel and ceramic sinks. (It was partly Mumsnet that got me worried about the material: at one point in our journey of trying to make sink decisions I thought I'd go for a Franke Fragmentite sink, but then in an old discussion thread here I read someone's dire warning against it!)

[suealpha]

We were most recently thinking of having a particularly beautiful AstraCast sink (Canterbury Sit In Butler), but the edge of that is higher than that of the work surface either side, so it's very difficult to think how you could get water to drain into the sink. I did find a SimpleHuman drainer that looked as if it might do the job but my OH thinks it looks too fussy - and I'm not sure that I don't agree with him.
So, after, as I've said, going round and round in circles, I thought it might be a good idea to start from scratch again, but seeing the various options in the flesh and not just in the inadequate photos and drawings you often get online.

[pashmina696]

There is a blanco showroom in hertfordshire, just south of st albans, it is massive and full of every kind of blanco sink imaginable.

www.blanco.co.uk/support/contact

you need an appointment from a kitchen dealer to get in, but that is easy enough they would just call ahead for you and you can then get in to see the sinks and ask questions etc.

[suealpha]

Blanco certainly have an impressive website, Pashmina696. I'll definitely look at it carefully as I haven't come across it before, but St Albans is quite a way out of London, so I'm not sure we'd get to it when visiting London. (Just in case you read Hertfordshire for Herefordshire, BTW, it is the latter county we live in - West Midlands, bordering central Wales. Thank you anyhow)

[Apatite1]

Wigmore street in London is the place for a multitude of high end kitchen showrooms and there will be plenty of sinks in situ for you to look at.

[suealpha]

Oh that's really useful to know, Apatite1, and it's not too far from John Lewis's too, which we miss so much now we've moved away from the South-East.

[pashmina696]

check out blanco and franke they are the main manufacturers, you would need to be driving to get to that showroom, but it is not far from london at all - right on the m25. central london has no shortage of kitchen shops as you could imagine.

we ended up with a composite granite sink which matches our worktop perfectly, and i still love it 5 years on.... good luck