Kitchen Trends Today

Kitchen trends I am seeing.

Part 1: Cabinets

Kitchen design should be timeless, that is what I always strive for when designing a kitchen for a client.  I do not want a kitchen that I design to be an avocado green waiting to happen!  Many kitchen colors, materials and ideas do run in trend cycles.  Here are a few of the things I have been seeing in cabinetry;

• Painted maple cabinets, especially grey are making the rounds.
• Grey stained cabinets are also fabulous.
• Glazing is still in, though not as popular as a few years ago.  Still, glazing adds depth, and can help disguise fingerprints, a great benefit for families with small children.
• Custom, custom, custom.  Details that elevate a kitchen to a designer look, furniture base, legs and posts, stacked crown molding.
• Mixing colors and materials, dark stained cabinets with a stainless decorative hood, or a different colored island.
• White cabinets are always in style.
• Clean lines on cabinets, not a lot of carving or ornamentation.
• Flat panel doors, rather than raised panel.
• Stained cherry or alder.

I always tell my clients to pick something that is timeless for them, something that they liked five years ago, they will probably still like in another five years.  Kitchen cabinets tend to be the largest chunk of a kitchen budget, (sometimes they are second to appliances) so choose well.  Buy high quality, well-constructed cabinets with a great finish (I prefer the catalyzed conversion varnish finish) and you can expect to get many years of use out of them. 

Next time I will talk about other kitchen trends.

MaryBeth