Kitchen splashbacks

A splashback is the cheapest way to change how a kitchen reads, and the fussiest piece of glass to measure.

It has to clear the worktop, meet the underside of the wall units, return into a window reveal, and land exactly on socket boxes that are already fixed in the wall and are never quite where the drawing said.

Single panels of toughened glass, back-painted, with every cut-out made before toughening, sockets, switches and the opening for the extractor.

The photographs show the colour range these were done in: orange, lime, olive, deep pink, brown, pale blue, cream and bronze. Behind a gas hob the panel is toughened as a matter of course.

6mm toughened, back-painted to the colour. Low-iron glass where the colour has to be true: ordinary float glass carries a faint green cast, which turns a white splashback cream and a pale blue slightly sea-coloured.

Cut-outs and drilled holes are made before toughening. Edges are polished where they are exposed and arrissed where they will sit behind a unit.

Glass

6mm toughened, back-painted

Colour

Matched to a sample

Base glass

Low-iron where colour accuracy matters

Cut-outs

Sockets, switches and extractor, cut before toughening

Edges

Polished where exposed