Quick answer
In St Heliers and Mission Bay the view and the overhead cupboards want the same piece of wall, and the view wins. Accept that at concept stage and the design gets simple: one tall bank of full-height cabinetry on the blind wall, an island deep enough to work from both sides, and drawers rather than doors everywhere under the bench. On typical cabinet dimensions a single 1,800mm tall bank holds roughly three and a half times what the 3,000mm overhead run you deleted ever did, so the storage is not lost — it is rehoused. What actually changes is the money. Fewer doors, more runners, and the spend moves from what you look at to what slides.
Key points
- Overheads hang about 450 to 500mm above the bench, which is exactly where the harbour is, so on a view wall you are choosing one or the other.
- On typical dimensions a 1,800mm tall bank holds around 2.3 m³ against roughly 0.65 m³ for the 3,000mm overhead run it replaces.
- H1/AS1 sixth edition removed the schedule method altogether, and its calculation method requires the wall glazing area to be 40% or less of the gross wall area.
- The older schedule method and its 30% glazing limit can still be used until 26 November 2026, after which that pathway is gone.
- Delete the overheads and the under-cabinet task lighting goes with them, so the lighting has to be redesigned rather than relocated.
One tall bank swallows three and a half overhead runs.
There is a version of this house on half the streets running up off Tamaki Drive. Brick and tile or a weatherboard bungalow, renovated once in the nineties and once more around 2010, and it still has a run of overhead cupboards straight across the one window that sees Rangitoto. Somebody paid for those doors. Somebody paid for the glass behind them twenty years earlier. The two have been quietly cancelling each other out ever since, and every owner since has looked at that wall and felt something was wrong without being able to name it.
So here is the thing nobody writes on the concept drawing: the view costs you your overhead cupboards. That is the trade. Not a compromise to be designed around, not something a clever detail solves — a straight swap. Pretending otherwise is the reason these kitchens end up with the toaster, the breadboard and three weeks of mail living permanently on the island. What follows is how to make the swap deliberately. Anything touching consent, glazing or structure needs confirming with Auckland Council or your LBP before you order a thing.
The trade nobody puts in writing
Run the numbers on the elevation rather than the plan, because plan view hides this completely. A bench sits at about 900mm. Overheads usually start 450 to 500mm above it and run up another 720mm or so. That puts a solid box of joinery between roughly 1,350 and 2,150mm off the floor, across the full width of the wall. Now go and stand where the sink is. Everything between your chin and well over your head is cupboard. That band is not a design detail — it is the entire view. The harbour is not on the floor and it is not on the ceiling.
Which means the honest question is not "how do we keep some overheads?" It is "what is that wall for?" On a Mission Bay or St Heliers site with water in front of it, the wall is for looking through. Once you say that out loud, the argument stops being about cupboards and starts being about where the storage goes instead — a much better argument, and one that has real answers.
How much glass you are actually allowed
If the answer to losing the overheads is "make the window bigger", the Building Code has a view on how much bigger. Auckland is climate zone 1. Under H1/AS1 sixth edition, effective 27 November 2025, the compliance route for the thermal envelope is either the calculation method in the acceptable solution or the modelling method in H1/VM1 — and the calculation method states plainly that the wall glazing area of the proposed building shall be 40% or less of the gross wall area. That is a hard ceiling and it is not an aesthetic one.
The sixth edition also did something that catches people mid-project: it removed the schedule method entirely. That was the simple prescriptive lookup most designers grew up with, and it capped glazing at 30% or less of total wall area, with a second test requiring the combined glazing on the east, south and west walls to be 30% or less of the combined area of those walls. The fifth edition amendment 1, which still contains it, can be used until 26 November 2026. If your kitchen is being drawn now for a consent lodged later this year, which edition your designer is working to is a real question with a real deadline on it.
There is a quirk in that second test worth knowing on this coast. The Tamaki Drive beaches — Ōrākei, Mission Bay, Kohimarama, St Heliers — sit south of Rangitoto and look north across the Waitematā. So for most of these houses the view wall is the north wall, and H1's own orientation appendix puts the north sector between more than 315° and less than 45°. The schedule method's east/south/west test simply does not count north glazing, because north-facing glass is the one orientation that gives back in winter what it costs. The overall 30% cap still catches you. But a big north window is treated more kindly than the same window facing west, and that is written into the standard rather than being a designer's opinion.
| Pathway | What it limits glazing to | Status at July 2026 | What it means on a view wall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schedule method (H1/AS1 5th ed, amendment 1) | 30% or less of total wall area, plus east, south and west combined at 30% or less of those walls | Usable until 26 November 2026 | Simple and prescriptive, but a full-width harbour wall often fails the 30% test on its own |
| Calculation method (H1/AS1 6th ed) | Wall glazing 40% or less of gross wall area | The acceptable solution from 27 November 2025 | You trade glass against the rest of the envelope — roofs still no less than R2.6, walls R1.0 |
| Modelling method (H1/VM1) | Not a lookup — the building is modelled | Current | The alternative H1/AS1 points to when the calculation method will not fit. Budget design time. |
| Altering an existing house | No percentage of its own | Always | The altered building must comply to at least the same extent as before — a bigger hole gets paid for elsewhere |
That last row is the one that bites on a renovation. Cutting a bigger opening into an existing wall makes the building thermally worse, and the guidance is explicit that you then have to upgrade some of the existing building so it performs at least as well as it did before the alteration. Under the calculation method the glass is genuinely tradeable — there is no minimum R-value set for windows, only for roofs, walls and floors — so a better window can be paid for with a better roof, or the other way round. It is a set of scales, not a shopping list. What it is not is free.
The island and one tall bank do all the work
Here is where the article stops being about glass. Once the view wall is glass and bench and nothing else, two elements carry the whole kitchen: an island, and one tall bank on the blind wall. That is it. And the arithmetic is much friendlier than people expect, because the overhead run everybody is mourning was never holding very much.
A 3,000mm overhead run, 720mm high and 300mm deep, is about 0.65 m³ gross — and the top shelf of it is a stool job, so call the genuinely usable share lower again. One tall bank 1,800mm wide, 2,150mm high and 600mm deep is about 2.3 m³. Roughly three and a half times the volume, on a wall nobody was looking at, at a depth that actually takes a cereal box the sensible way round. The trade is not close. The reason it feels close is that the overheads are visible and the tall bank has not been drawn yet. Our island sizing guide covers the widths and walkways; the point here is that the island stops being a styling feature and becomes structural to the storage plan.
| Element | Typical size (mm) | Gross volume | What it is genuinely good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead run | 3,000 × 720 × 300 | About 0.65 m³ | Light, everyday, front row only — the top shelf needs a stool |
| Island drawer bank | 2,400 × 720 × 600 | About 1.0 m³ | Everything you use standing at the bench, delivered up to you |
| Base run under the window | 3,000 × 720 × 600 | About 1.3 m³ | Deep and useful as drawers, a cave as cupboards |
| One tall bank | 1,800 × 2,150 × 600 | About 2.3 m³ | Pantry, appliances, bulk — most of the job, on one wall |
Those are gross volumes on typical dimensions, not a promise about your kitchen — run them on your own plan and the ratio will hold even if the numbers move. The design discipline that follows is simple. The tall bank takes everything with a box: pantry, small appliances, the bulk buy from Costco that arrives once a month. The island takes everything you use with your hands while standing at it. Nothing lives above 2,150mm because nothing can. If the household genuinely cannot fit inside that, the answer is not to smuggle the overheads back onto the view wall — it is a scullery behind the blind wall, which is where an Eastern Bays budget usually ends up anyway and is a far better use of the same money.
Where the money moves: from doors to internals
This is the part that surprises owners, so take it early. Deleting a run of overheads does not make the kitchen cheaper. The doors were the cheap part. A door is a bit of board, two hinges and a handle. What replaces the storage is drawers, and drawers cost money in the one place you cannot see: the runners.
A cupboard with a door needs hardware that lets it swing. A drawer needs hardware that carries the entire loaded weight of its contents, cantilevered, twenty thousand times, without dropping at the front. Full-extension soft-close runners are a genuine step-up per cabinet over a door and two hinges, and in a view kitchen you are buying a lot of them. That is the real budget shift, and it is worth saying plainly because a quote that looks like it has fewer parts can easily cost more. Where the money goes in a kitchen quote breaks the rest of it down; the version specific to this kitchen is that you are buying mechanism instead of frontage.
The good news is that this is money that comes back daily. A door gives you a hole and a torch-hunt. A drawer brings the back of the cabinet out to you, which is the entire reason the tall bank beats the overheads on volume you will actually use rather than merely own. Get the runners right, get the drawer heights right, and the kitchen works. Value-engineer the runners and you have paid for volume you cannot reach — the exact failure the overheads were already committing. There is more on which storage details actually earn their keep rather than merely photographing well in a showroom.
The money does not leave. It moves behind the drawer front.
Every view kitchen I've fitted, the owner's already grieving the overheads by the time we're on site. Not one has ever rung me two years later to say they miss them.
The two things the Eastern Bays adds
First, light. North glass gets the most sun of any orientation in this country, and it arrives low across the water in winter, straight down the length of your bench. A high-gloss door facing that window is a mirror. A very dark benchtop under it shows every crumb and every smear by about 4pm. This is not an argument for beige — it is an argument for seeing your samples on site, on the actual wall, at the actual time of day, rather than under the fluorescents in a supplier's showroom.
The other half of that is the lighting you just deleted. Under-cabinet lighting lives under the overheads, and the overheads are gone, so the bench has no task light at all. The default outcome is a ceiling downlight sitting behind you, putting your own shadow precisely where the knife is. It needs designing from scratch: a track or a run of downlights pulled forward over the front edge of the bench, plus lighting inside the tall bank and the deeper drawers. Our task, ambient and under-cabinet guide has the layering; the thing to take from it here is that this is a design job, not a fitting you relocate.
Second, salt. NZS 3604:2011 puts anything within 500m of the sea in corrosion zone D — its high, coastal band. That standard is about timber-framed buildings and their structural fixings rather than your cabinet hinges, so do not let anyone quote it at you as a kitchen rule. But it tells you honestly what the air is doing on Tamaki Drive. Salt comes in through the ranchslider you leave open all summer, settles on the inside faces that never get rain-washed, and turns up first on the hardware. Handles, hinges and runners are what show it. Ask your supplier what their hardware warranty says in a coastal location and get the answer in writing, because handle and hardware choices are the part of this kitchen most likely to look tired first.
On benchtops, one point of accuracy while you are here, because plenty of what you will read online is Australian content wearing a New Zealand hat. Engineered stone is not banned in New Zealand. Australia banned it in July 2024 and New Zealand did not follow — MBIE consulted on options including licensing and a ban, and general Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 duties apply, but no engineered-stone-specific ban or licensing regime is in force here. The risk is real and it sits with whoever cuts the material, which makes it a dust-control question for your fabricator rather than a legal one for you. The position could change; anyone telling you it already has has copied their content across the Tasman.
What goes wrong
- The overheads get deleted and the storage never gets rehoused, so the island becomes the pantry on day one and stays that way for a decade.
- The tall bank is drawn on the only wall that also has the fridge and a door swing, and gets shortened on site until it holds nothing much.
- Nobody redesigns the lighting, so a beautiful bench gets lit by a downlight behind the cook, and every job happens in their own shadow.
- Drawers are specified, then the runners get value-engineered to side-mount, so the drawer opens three-quarters and you have paid for volume at the back you cannot reach.
- The window is taken down to bench level with no upstand detail, and water gets behind the joinery at the one junction that never dries out.
- The glazing is drawn first and the H1 sums are done last, so the roof insulation or the window spec has to change after the joinery has been priced and ordered.
- The cooktop goes on the island under the view, and nobody checks whether a duct can physically get from there to an external wall.
- The tall bank is specified in a high-gloss finish opposite a north window, and it mirrors the harbour back at you all afternoon.
What to ask before you sign
- Which H1 edition and which pathway are these drawings using, and what glazing percentage does the design actually land on?
- Can I see the view wall in elevation, with a sight line at standing and seated height?
- What is the tall bank's finished internal width once the scribes and fillers are off it?
- Are the drawer runners full-extension and soft-close, and what is the load rating on the deep ones?
- Where is the task lighting now the overheads have gone, and who is designing it?
- Is the island deep enough to work from both sides, and what is the walkway either side of it?
- What does the hardware warranty say for a house within 500m of the sea?
- Is this supply and install on one contract and one invoice, or am I coordinating two suppliers?
Frequently asked questions
Can I keep some overhead cupboards and still get the view in a Mission Bay kitchen?
You can keep them on the return walls, and you should — that is where they cost you nothing. What does not work is keeping a token section across the view wall itself, because overheads occupy roughly 1,350 to 2,150mm off the floor, which is the exact band the harbour sits in. A short run there reads as a mistake rather than a compromise, and it holds so little that you have given up the view for maybe a fifth of a cubic metre. Keep them where the wall is blind, delete them where it is not.
How much glass am I allowed on the view wall in Auckland?
Auckland is climate zone 1, and under H1/AS1 sixth edition the calculation method requires the wall glazing area to be 40% or less of the gross wall area, measured across the building rather than that one wall. The older schedule method capped it at 30% of total wall area and can still be used until 26 November 2026, after which it is gone from the acceptable solution. There is also a modelling route via H1/VM1 for designs that will not fit either. Your designer works this out across the whole thermal envelope, so get the number confirmed before you fall in love with an elevation.
Will deleting the overhead cupboards hurt me at resale?
Not on this coast, and arguably the opposite. A buyer standing in a St Heliers kitchen is buying the water in the window, and a run of cupboards across it is the first thing they will mentally rip out. What does hurt at resale is deleting the overheads without rehousing the storage, because the kitchen then shows as cluttered and buyers read clutter as "not enough storage" regardless of the actual volume. The tall bank is what protects you — it is the reason the benches are clear on viewing day.
Does a kitchen this close to the beach need special hardware?
It needs hardware chosen with the location declared, which is not quite the same thing. NZS 3604:2011 classes anything within 500m of the sea as corrosion zone D, its high coastal band — that standard governs timber-framed buildings and structural fixings, not cabinetry, but it is an honest description of the air on Tamaki Drive. Salt blows in through open doors and settles on surfaces that never get rain-washed, and hardware shows it before anything else does. Tell your supplier the address, ask what the warranty covers in a coastal zone, and get that answer in writing rather than over the phone.
Does opening up the wall for a bigger window need consent?
Very likely, and this is one to confirm rather than assume. A like-for-like kitchen swap usually needs no building consent, but enlarging an opening in an external wall generally alters structure and engages the Building Code, which can mean consent and an LBP. H1 comes with it: the altered building has to comply to at least the same extent as before the alteration, so a bigger hole has to be paid for thermally somewhere else in the building. If the property is cross-lease or unit-title — and plenty along Tamaki Drive are — you may also need co-owner or body corporate consent. Talk to Auckland Council and your LBP before anything is ordered.
Getting a real number on it
A view kitchen prices differently from its cabinet count, and any supplier who quotes it off a linear-metre rate has not understood it. The cabinets are fewer. The internals are better. The tall bank has to be dead accurate because you can see its full height against a wall with nothing else on it, and the island is doing structural work in the storage plan rather than standing there looking expensive. Entry grade sits in the lower five figures, mid-range climbs comfortably into the mid five figures, and premium goes well past that — all plus GST, supply and install. The honest driver is the internals, not the door colour. There is a fuller breakdown in what a kitchen costs in Auckland.
Send us the scope and we will price it. A rough sketch is enough — the wall with the water in it, roughly how wide, and a photo from where you stand at the sink. We come back inside 24 hours; drawings sharpen the number but are not a prerequisite. We manufacture in East Tamaki, supply and install under one contract and one invoice, and a kitchen goes in over five to seven days. Twenty-three years, two thousand-plus kitchens, ten-plus a week, no showroom and no retail margin on top. And if we think your view wall is going to fail its glazing sums, we would rather tell you at quote stage than after the joinery is cut.