Best White Coffee Makers

White is the hardest finish to keep looking new and the easiest to match to a kitchen. Both facts follow from the same property: nothing hides on it. Fewer than a quarter of the machines here offer it, so the shortlist is genuinely a shortlist rather than the whole catalogue in a different shade.

White plastic yellows, and heat makes it faster

This is the single thing worth knowing before buying. ABS and polypropylene both yellow under ultraviolet light, and a machine that also runs warm ages from the inside out as well. A white drip maker on a windowsill will shift colour within a couple of years, most visibly around the boiler housing and the warming plate. Painted metal and enamel do not do this. If the body is metal the white will still be white long after the machine stops working.

Cream is not white, and listings use both words

A large share of what is sold as white is cream, ivory, bone or off-white, and alongside a genuinely white kettle the difference is obvious and annoying. The photographs on this site are filed by the colourway the maker printed on the box, so where a machine is cream it is described as cream. If you are matching to existing appliances, match to a photograph rather than to the word.

What it is good at

White reflects heat rather than absorbing it, stays cooler in a sunlit kitchen, and makes a small counter read as larger. It also shows limescale drips and coffee splashes immediately, which is a nuisance and, if you are honest, the reason a white machine tends to get cleaned.