I have been getting asked about kitchens quite a bit lately – at least more than normal – and most of the questions are centered around what modern kitchen trends am I seeing. To be honest, I am not a trend follower, at least not intentionally. I’m not trying to issue myself as some sort of all-inspiring trend-maker and I have never held myself out as such but I do know what I like and I have been paying a little more attention to what specialized kitchen designers are doing. (I can promise no plastic plants or ceramic chickens will be found in any of the following kitchens)
Here’s what I think are the Top 10 Moderns Kitchen Design Trends:
1. Cabinetry | White Cabinetry and dark(er) natural woods like walnut and mahogany. Gone are hyper detailed and overwrought fussy looking cabinets, replaced by full overlay slab panel door and drawer fronts.
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2. Counter tops | Light colored Quartz and marble counter tops – particularly Calcutta Gold marble. We are using less granite, especially multi-tonal heavily veined granites. If we do use granite, it has been honed or flamed and not polished.
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3. Hardware | Decorative pulls are on their way out with finger pulls becoming the more popular choice. These can be pulls that are cut into the lip of the panel or small finger grabs that lay on top of the door. Either way, the goal is to produce less visual clutter.
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4. Stainless Steel Appliances| Did these ever go away? Name brands are still the name of the game, Sub-Zero, Viking, Dacor, Miele, and GE Monogram. If you ever needed proof of these brand popularity, look at the real estate section of the newspaper and see how many homes list these brands by name as selling points. They are high quality, function extremly well and add long term value.
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5. Integrated appliances | dishwasher drawers for small loads, and under-counter refrigerators (like the awesome Sub-Zero 700BR) for specialty work zones.
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6. The Social Kitchen | Very large islands and the demise (or at least the very reduced capacity) of the table in the kitchen. Our kitchen designs are incorporating large island(s) that can accomodate cooking, prep work and dining. The area previously reserved for the breakfast table has been replaced with a sitting area in the kitchen. The large over-scaled island provides an area for your kids to spread out their homework and projects and still give mom and dad a place to prepare the meal in a social and spacious manner.
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7. Stainless Steel Finishes | The request for easy to clean, industrial materials in the kitchen is on the rise – this means more stainless steel counter tops and back-splashes. It is becoming easier to incorporate stainless steel into a complete house finish package now that more and more faucet manufacturers offering up stainless as a option. Be aware, stainless steel does scratch – all metals do – but eventually the scratches become a finish within themselves. I do think that this is one of those materials that all interior designers stay away from and architects embrace. I don’t know why, it just seems that way.
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8. Integrated sink tops | it seemed inevitable. As soon as stainless steel became a counter top option, custom fabricating integral sinks into the counter was the logical next step. Available options, including the number of bowls, depths, sizes, built-in drain boards, etc. make this a fun and fluid material to work with.
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9. Horizontally oriented grain | sometimes all it take is a slight adjustment to a well known material to introduce a fresh new look. Part of the reason this trend is starting to become more popular is the introduction of the open floor plan back into the modern kitchen. The grain extends the space visually and integrates what was previously just a utilitarian space with it’s own personality into the same finish palette as the the main living areas.
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10. The removal of decorative pendant lighting| pendant lighting suspending down over the kitchen island is hopefully going away. At one time, decorative pendant lighting served as a visual cue to stop your eye, giving you something to focus on and contain the working kitchen area from the eating kitchen area. Now that we have multi-purpose rooms and kitchens no longer have to be tucked in between the Garage and the Dining room, we don’t want your eye to stop at the island.
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Kitchen design trends change fairly rapidly but most of the items on this list have been developing and refining for years. Despite the hype, kitchen don’t come into favor or go out of style in a year – if they do, I think you have a bad design on your hands. Yes, I know that I called this list the Top10 Modern Kitchen Trends, but I hope that this list represents more than a trend. Trend … that makes it sound so irrelevant and transitory (two words that I strive to avoid using when describing my work).
While this list represents my own opinions, I did reach out to some other highly acclaimed and fairly renown in their own rights kitchen designers and asked them to send me what trends they were seeing. I didn’t give them any parameters so that they could send whatever they wished. Mostly I was trying to see if my list was 10 years behind or 10 years head (it was somewhere in the middle). Thanks to:
For every one kitchen I design, they do twenty so they are able to see what works more effectively with a quicker turnaround. I am grateful for their input and for allowing me to bounce my own design tolerances off of theirs.
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It’s the little details that make a good house a great one. A product that we frequently use that helps set the design tone from the street is address letters. If you have ever gone out shopping for them, you can attest to just how hard it is to anything special.
In the picture below, you can see we pin-mounted the number 6 beside the front door. You can buy a similar style letter at Design within Reach for $48 each – and they are great quality. But as soon as you add another 3 or 4 numbers/ letters, that adds up really quick. Four letters, with shipping and handling from DWR, will set you back a grand total of $176.64. Ouch! Really? But it’s worth it…. right? It sets the tone that tells people you care, that you have great taste and style, and that you’re good on a first date, and that you like animals. But what if you don’t like the Neutra letters, or it’s an inappropriate style for your house? Are you forced to go to (gasp!) Pottery Barn?
clean and simple
There is an online retailer that sell letters like the one I’m showing above, and plenty others, for a fraction of that cost while giving you a level of options that is fantastic. I order from signlettersource.com all the time and they have always delivered. As an example, because I am about to order these babies for my own house so I clipped out the internet page showing you how many options you have and how simple it is to go through this process for yourself.
The process is ordered into a series of steps to walk you through the process:
Step 1: Enter in your letters or numbers
Step 2: How tall do you want your letters to be? 4″ is typical but you have the choice of going as small as 2″ or as large as 17″
Step 3: How thick do you want the letters to be? 1/8″ is the smallest but you can increase the thickness in 1/8″ increments up to 1″. In the picture above, we went with 3/4″
Step 4: Choose your finish. You can select brass, bronze, stainless steel or aluminum with a choice of 14 material finishes and 54 baked enamel color finishes (WOW!)
Step 5: Choose the font style you want. The style we used above was Ribbon but there are 94 font styles to choose from – you can even get those fonts in script (cursive) but you have to contact the company directly for pricing.
Step 6: Choose how you would like to mount your new awesome letters. You can attach them directly to the wall, or post – whatever, or you can have them pin mounted so that they stand off the surface of whatever it is that you are attaching them to. You would select ‘Welded Stud Mount’ for the pin mounting option.
If you go pin mounted, as part of step 6 you will need to select the stud length. This is asking you to tell them how long the welded studs need to penetrate whatever it is that are attaching to. Unless it’s masonry (brick, CMU, etc), you want to select a length (depth) that will get you to the stud – if you don’t know, call the company and they can tell you know what ;ength you need. Next you will need to add a spacer dimension – this is asking how far off the wall do you want your letters to stand. We typically go with a 1/”2 standoff – just enough to get a slight shadow line.
In the example order form I have inserted here, my total was $148.00 – so yea, okay math majors, I know the math – that’s only $28 less than DWR … but … it is still less and I have loads of options buddy. I could have dropped the material thinckness down to 1/2″ if I wanted too – but I didn’t and yet I’m still ahead. If you do decide to try these letters out, take a picture and email it to me – bob@lifeofanarchitect.com, Id like to see it.
Here’s the link that will get you straight to the order form (here)
