Chrome Sockets

Brushed or polished, and how to decide

This is the choice that matters and it is not about quality, because both are the same plating on the same plate. Polished is a mirror: it reflects the window, the wall opposite and whoever is standing in front of it, which makes it lively in a hall and restless in a room where you sit. Brushed carries a fine directional grain that scatters light instead, so it reads as a quiet piece of metal. About seven in ten of this range is brushed, which reflects how people actually choose once they have lived with both. The practical rule: polished where nobody touches it, brushed where they do.

Where each one usually ends up

Polished suits a hall, a formal room, a period house where the ironmongery is already bright, and anywhere the plate is meant to read as a fitting rather than disappear. Brushed suits kitchens, home offices, bedrooms and utility rooms, where sockets are used constantly and a mirror finish would show it. Mixing the two in a single line of sight rarely reads as deliberate, so if a house is being done room by room, decide per room and keep each room consistent rather than each floor.

Insert colour

The insert is the moulded face around the pin holes and this range offers white, black and grey in close to equal numbers. White is the crisp option and the one that matches white plates elsewhere in the house. Black recedes into the apertures and lets the metal read as one piece, which suits brushed particularly well. Grey is the quiet compromise and the one that vanishes against a mid-toned wall. The plate does not change; only the face does, and it is the part visible from across a room.

Single, double and the heavier ratings

Doubles are the larger part of the range and the sensible default wherever things are plugged and unplugged. Singles suit a tight reveal or a fixed appliance. Above the ordinary thirteen amp fittings the range carries 45A cooker control units, which combine a heavy duty switch with a socket on one plate. These are worth choosing first in a kitchen: a cooker unit is usually the largest plate on the wall and everything else ends up matched to it. The same logic applies to the run above a worktop, where a line of doubles at the same height reads as planned and a mixture of singles and doubles reads as whatever the last electrician had on the van.

Sockets with USB

Around four in ten of this range carries USB, and both port types appear. USB-A is the older rectangular port and still fits the cables most households already own. USB-C is smaller, reversible and carries more power, which is what a recent phone, tablet or laptop is built around. Fittings with one of each are the pragmatic choice while both kinds are in use. The stated output is on each product page and is worth reading, because charging overnight and running a device while charging are different demands on the same port.

Shaver outlets

The range also holds shaver sockets, which are not ordinary sockets at all. They carry an isolating transformer, so a razor or an electric toothbrush can be used safely in a room where an ordinary socket would not be allowed, and most offer dual voltage for appliances brought back from abroad. They are the fitting people forget until a bathroom is finished and there is nowhere to charge anything, and retro-fitting one afterwards means opening a wall that has just been tiled. If a bathroom is being planned, decide where the shaver outlet goes at the same time as the mirror, because the two almost always want to be near each other and the cable run is far easier to add before the plastering than after it.

Plate styles and fitting

Screwless plates clip over a hidden frame for an unbroken face and are around half this range. Flat plate keeps its visible screws and sits close to the wall. Curved edge softens the outline and forgives a wall that is not quite true, which is worth knowing in an older house. The constraint that catches people out is depth: screwless plates generally need a deeper back box than the flat plate they replace, and a plate that will not sit flush is nearly always a box that is too shallow rather than a fault with the plate. Metal plates also need their own earth connection back to the box, which is part of why the wiring belongs to a qualified electrician.