"Homely" of course, means different things to different people. There’s a sudden pressure on home appliance manufacturers to make different styles of cooker available to the domestic public, in order to account for the wide range of tastes people are becoming accustomed to express within their four castle walls. Hence the Belling Classic range, which speaks eloquently to the nostalgic in everyone. Belling cookers from the Classic range are clearly modelled on the kind of cooker one tends to remember from the family home of childhood – square, imposing, and available in a choice of three neutral colours. The look is distinctively modernised, which lets the Classic Belling range cooker fall into step with current tastes for "re imaginings" of design favourites (note certain stupendously successful car models for reference with that one). Features are updated too – there are no throwbacks in the things these Belling cookers can do, only those lovely hints of the past in their solid good looks. Belling are clearly looking to capitalise on the new house as home trend by bringing superb up to date functionality into the modern kitchen in a reassuringly old school package.

The heart of any family home is the cooking and it’s certainly more popular now than it has ever been – and with superb gear like the Belling range cooker (including the stunning Belling classic range) on offer for the home chef, it’s little wonder. Belling cookers have long (apparently – so the pro chefs would have us believe, anyway, and there seems little reason to argue with them) been synonymous with solidity, reliability and excellent cooking functions: now, they’re also pushing for entry in the home style leagues as well.

There has been a bit of a shift in the way people go about buying cookers recently. One is tempted to suggest it has something to do with the relocation people’s view of their homes as a whole has undergone – a slip that started with homes for sale and ended with homes being places to live in. It’s definitely the case that interior decorating is taking a sideways swing towards more personal themes, which tends to suggest that home owners are doing up their properties with a view to making them homes, rather than showing them off to potential buyers. And so major household appliances, of which the Belling range cooker is obviously an example, are starting to look – well – more homely.

The Belling range cooker has had a makeover – it’s now leading the fashion pack with its reassuringly retro good looks.

A Belling range cooker can make any kitchen feel simultaneously modern and fresh, and very "homey". Hats off to the design team, who must have seen this new culinary and domestic environment coming. They’ve given Belling a head start their competition, unless it’s quick, might never catch up on. Brilliant.