A chippy can create any kind of decorative effect you desire (its just fibre board and mouldings) and you can vent the mechanical hood under it. I have a godawful stainless steel modern hood in my vintage cottage. I'm sure the last residents loved it, but they failed to actually have the hood vented properly. It just vents into the roofspace. So I now have the opportunity to remove the largely useless anyway hood and start over. I'm planning the same as you. A faux hearth, boxed in with fibre cement board and then with decorative mouldings attached. The actual mechanical part will be properly vented outside.

lyndalcrombie, you are most welcome, I was a bit worried when you felt you needed to be defensive about your likes and dislikes. As I said I got allot out of your post, as I too am building and have themes and colours racing through my head and if I had any doubts about picking a colour, this forum has helped me enormously especially the informative comments on other Houzz forums from both Midesign0401 and Ladyrob1. Together they have helped me choose colours that will work for "ME" as that's the only person that has to be happy ultimately, "ME", not wanting to leave hubby out of the mix but he couldn't care less about colours and themes, I mean, most men don't care, as long as they have their chair and the remote ha-ha.....thank goodness we still have to buy all our lounge furniture, or hubby would want to take the ugly old thing he's sitting on at present, thank goodness it's not particularly comfortable, or I'd have buckleys of keeping it out of the house ha-ha Enjoy your house!!

Haven't thought about that. It might help though. Unless I am wokking, usually it would be on 2, or 3 which is quite a bit more quiet compared to it running at maximum. I feel the noise mainly comes from the shape of the ducting. Being a flexible bellow it would create more noise despite being stretched. My idea was that if I put a smooth solid ducting near the kitchen area in the cupboard aka what Sirius and Qasair advocate, the main noise I should hear is from the air going through the filter. Once it pass the ceiling, a bit of flexi ducting and some bends will help damping noise from the motor travelling back inside which is what Schweigen and Whispair advocate.

Put a smeg in our new kitchen. Best advice re price is to look at appliances online. Photo below