Taps - kitchen and bathroom recommendations?

[NWnature]

Hi everyone

We are doing a full refurb and I need to source taps for the kitchen, utility room and three bathrooms. Any recommendations or things to avoid?

I like the matt black look but we are in London and the water is so hard, I think they might be a nightmare to keep clean. Everything will be relatively modern design rather than traditional/shaker so those styles.

Thanks in advance

If you can afford it, go for British or Italian made. Try and avoid Chinese made. This is because the quality of the steel is better in UK and Italy.

PigletJohn rates Bristan as a brand. You want something well made which is easy to replace if it develops a fault.

wot she said.

Piglet you’d be proud. I’ve insisted the builder uses all bristan taps in my refurbishment.

Thanks all! Will have a look at Bristan :)

Avoid a floor standing tap for the bath. Looks lovely but takes 30 minutes to fill a bath as they're so slow

Don't get black if in hard water, my freakishly super clean sister has struggled to keep them limescale free and the ones installed in the trendy pub looked awful after six months and were replaced not long after.

We got our taps (and to be honest most of our bathroom stuff from lusso Stone) would recommend they look great.

I regret not getting a boiling water tap in our kitchen!

Oh I'd not thought about the hard water issue with black taps...I'd been thinking about those for our upcoming refurb. Is it a similar issue with gold/brass taps as well?

Limescale needs lots of cleaning so gold plate will wear away.

Brass is OK if you have a housemaid to polish them twice a day.

Nothing is as durable as chrome.

Start looking at water softeners.

I've been recommended hansgrohe.

I've got dornbracht in my kitchen but that's too expensive for the bathroom given the number of taps required!

Decent taps are worth it though - my brother's house has unbranded DIY warehouse taps and they keep failing.

Grohe for bathroom. They weren't particularly dear.

We have a blanco tap in our kitchen (the culina-s specifically), which I like because it’s flexible and nice to use. But it was a pain to install and there was much moaning from the builder.

We have the same grohe tap on all our basins (4 in total) and I’ve been very happy with them. We picked them up for about £40 each.

Specifically this one I think www.qssupplies.co.uk/bathroom-furniture-shower-taps/89246.htm