Why we use unlacquered brass

Lacquered brass keeps the showroom shine. We do not specify it.

Unlacquered brass — the kind we use on every ProLine kitchen — starts out the same colour. Six months later it is a different colour. A year later it is a different colour again. The patina is uneven, and it is uneven in the places you touch most: the cabinet pull next to the espresso machine, the tap by the morning sink, the handle of the kettle drawer. The brass remembers where you cook.

We are aware this is a thing some clients do not want. The conversation about it is part of the design phase, not after install. Lacquered finishes are available; we just need to know early so we can specify a different alloy and order from a different supplier. The two looks are not interchangeable, and it is faster and cheaper to decide before we cut.

There is a quieter argument we make for unlacquered. A house that has been lived in should look lived in. The lacquer is a way of keeping a room frozen at the moment of install — every fingerprint visible against an immaculate surface, every season's wear a small failure. Unlacquered brass turns the same wear into an accumulated patina: not failure, but evidence. The room is on your side.

It also outlasts the lacquer by decades. Lacquered finishes degrade — slowly in dry rooms, quickly near a sink. Once the lacquer fails, the brass underneath looks worse than it would have without it: blotchy, half-shiny, half-tarnished. Unlacquered brass simply keeps darkening at its own pace, evenly, for the rest of your life.

If you are unsure, our recommendation is this: pick one drawer pull of each finish, live with both for a month, then choose. Almost everyone who tries it picks unlacquered.