Nine examples of contemporary designer kitchen taps that not only look the part but act it too, combining sleek design with hidden abilities and functionality.

Grohe Blue’s chilled and filtered still and sparkling water options encourage users to drink more water, while saving on plastic from bottled water

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

Grohe Blue’s chilled and filtered still and sparkling water options encourage users to drink more water, while saving on plastic from bottled water

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In the minimalist modern kitchen, every worktop appliance is a sacrifice of design. Every kitchen redesign, from simple clear-outs to full renovations, is a cull of barely-used and out-of-date equipment, from which only the most functional products survive. There’s one fixture above all others, however, that even the flattest of kitchen surfaces daren’t attempt life without. The kitchen tap. These nine innovative kitchen taps not only outperform their forgotten ancestors but also boost their continued necessity by eating up functionalities from other soon-to-be-obsolete appliances.

KWC’s digital smart tap range, ONO, allows users to save presets with the perfect combination of temperature, pressure and flow duration, suiting different users and tasks

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

KWC’s digital smart tap range, ONO, allows users to save presets with the perfect combination of temperature, pressure and flow duration, suiting different users and tasks

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The digital-preset tap

Whether you find controlling water temperature and pressure easier with a traditional dual-dial tap, or a sleeker asymmetric mixer, finding the sweet spot between melting skin from bone and freezing it solid is like tuning a manual radio in a moving vehicle. KWC’s ONO range brings to the tap industry what radio users have enjoyed for decades: the ability to save and switch to preset combinations at the flick of a switch.

Steinberg’s pivoting 100 1490 model can swivel in two places to access a wider area, or neatly fold away from the sink entirely, when not in use

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

Steinberg’s pivoting 100 1490 model can swivel in two places to access a wider area, or neatly fold away from the sink entirely, when not in use

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The folding tap

The smart-product revolution is well-and-truly underway in the kitchen, but sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than simple engineering ingenuity. Steinberg’s 100 1490 sink mixer is the perfect out-of-the-way solution for wall-facing kitchen sinks. The mixer’s double-point swivelling spout allows it to quickly reposition above any point of the sink, before folding neatly away for freedom of hand use, once the water has been served.

With a sleek design for a pull-out tap, Grohe’s Zedra SmartControl tap hides its functionality well, using a thumb dial to control water pressure and a magnetic connection that snaps it back into place

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

With a sleek design for a pull-out tap, Grohe’s Zedra SmartControl tap hides its functionality well, using a thumb dial to control water pressure and a magnetic connection that snaps it back into place

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The one-hand tap

Flexible pull-out taps are another way to easily reach any point of the sink area, from any angle, too. But the large contraptions can tend to dominate the kitchen landscape. GROHE’s Zedra tap instead hides its flexible pull-out spray tube inside the tap’s original housing, while the SmartControl push-button dial at the end of the spout allows users to control the water’s flow rate and direction with one hand.

Quadrodesign’s Idealaqua taps feature two spouts that combine mains water and filtered water in the same faucet, but also keep them separated to preserve quality

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

Quadrodesign’s Idealaqua taps feature two spouts that combine mains water and filtered water in the same faucet, but also keep them separated to preserve quality

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The double-spout tap

Separate filtered water taps encourage users to drink more water while at home and reduce plastic waste by filling reusable water bottles when out of the house. While usable, however, additional sink-serving filtered taps are extra sink-top obstructions that ruin the look and hygiene of the worktop. Quadrodesign’s Idealaqua series instead combines the two entirely separate water flows into the same tap structure, streamlining the service.

Grohe Blue streams still, sparkling or medium water, along with standard mains hot and cold, at the touch of a button

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

Grohe Blue streams still, sparkling or medium water, along with standard mains hot and cold, at the touch of a button

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The drinkable tap

If water’s your drink of choice, there are more tap options that increase the function of a single tap even further. GROHE’s Blue mixer tap serves the home with three options for chilled and filtered water, producing up to three litres of still, sparkling or somewhere-in-the-middle water every hour. Despite the extra functionality, the tap is the same size as a standard mixer.

Using up to 50% less energy than a kettle, Grohe Red pours instant boiling hot water, while still protecting little hands with a patented child lock

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

Using up to 50% less energy than a kettle, Grohe Red pours instant boiling hot water, while still protecting little hands with a patented child lock

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The Kettle-free tap

Using up to 50% less energy than a kettle, while also dramatically cutting water waste, there’s environmental goodwill in throwing away clunky kettles in favour of boiling water taps. Using the same sleek design as Grohe Blue, Grohe Red uses a child-lock-protected push button to pour instant boiling water for drinks, pans and more. And combining the tap with an additional Coldfill mixing valve adds boiling water to cold for instant warm water, too.

Fohen’s 5-in-1 Futura Fizz tap puts everything together in one smooth chrome or matt black tap, with mains hot and cold, filtered chilled, sparkling or boiling hot water all served up instantly

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

Fohen’s 5-in-1 Futura Fizz tap puts everything together in one smooth chrome or matt black tap, with mains hot and cold, filtered chilled, sparkling or boiling hot water all served up instantly

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The all-in-one tap

Instant chilled, filtered sparkling water sounds great. But then so does instant boiling water without a kettle. Not to mention the environmental benefits of reduced energy and water use. So why choose between the two? Fohen’s Futura Fizz range of 5-in-1 taps, available in chrome or trending matt black, are the Swiss Army knives of kitchen faucets, with instant mains hot, mains cold, filtered chilled, filtered sparkling or boiling hot water all within easy reach from a simple dial.

Scanomat’s TopBrewer (top) and TopJuicer (bottom) taps don’t pour water at all. They respectively offer an extensive menu of coffee or juiced drinks instead, selected via an accompanying app

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

Scanomat’s TopBrewer (top) and TopJuicer (bottom) taps don’t pour water at all. They respectively offer an extensive menu of coffee or juiced drinks instead, selected via an accompanying app

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The drinkers’ choice tap

If you like your drink with more flavour than just sparkling water, however, the option of just cooling and carbonating water may not quite do it for you. Instead, Scanomat manufactures a series of taps targeted at workplaces and hospitality environments, which deliver a selection of app-controlled brewed coffee drinks – in TopBrewer – or still or sparkling fruit juice drinks – in TopJuicer – on demand.

Despite all the innovation and engineering technology, there are some things taps can’t do. Glass rinsers like this brushed gold one from WiPPhs, reach where taps alone cannot

Tap smarter not harder with innovative kitchen taps | Novedades

Despite all the innovation and engineering technology, there are some things taps can’t do. Glass rinsers like this brushed gold one from WiPPhs, reach where taps alone cannot

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The not really a tap tap

They may not strictly be taps, but glass rinsers have the ability to perform in areas that taps cannot. Rather than struggling to get into the end of a narrow-spouted bottle with a Frankenstein dishcloth-on-the-end-of-a-fork contraption, glass rinsers quickly and effortlessly rinse out interior edges and angles even dishwashers miss, using numerous multi-directional jets of high-pressurised water.

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