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What’s New in Kitchen Design? 5 Ideas to Set Yours Apart!
Your kitchen is the heart of your home—the place that naturally beckons family and friends. The best kitchens combine function and style, ensuring you have everything you need to prepare and serve meals plus all the elements that make this room an inviting haven, day in and day out.
So, what’s the latest in kitchen design? Ideas like the following can turn your kitchen into a dream!
Play with Cabinet Colors
Gone are the days when most kitchens featured wood-tone cabinets in shades like honey oak and cherry. Today, painted cabinets are an increasingly popular choice—allowing you to play with color and achieve the look that best matches your personality and your home style.
While white cabinets have been a kitchen staple for many years, more homeowners are choosing cabinet colors that evoke an organic, back-to-nature feel, like soft greens and pale greys. If you have an island, consider choosing a different color for the island base for a bit of contrast. You could go for drama by pairing a navy blue island with white perimeter cabinets, or choose a more understated look, like pale grey perimeter cabinets with a sage green island base.
Or take Farrow & Ball’s recommendations and paint your cabinets a rich black, like their Paean Black, making them the centerpiece of your kitchen. (Did you know that Freedom Millwork is one of only a handful of Farrow & Ball paint stockists in the Pennsylvania/New Jersey area? Or that the artisans at Freedom Millwork can paint your custom or semi-custom cabinets any color to fit your style?)
A tile backsplash is another place to experiment with color. For a subtle look, choose backsplash tiles in a color scheme similar in tone to your cabinet colors. Or for a more dramatic statement, try a tile color that stands out from your cabinets and counter. Take a page from the HGTV Dream Home and install your backsplash tiles vertically—a great way to draw the eye upward, especially in a kitchen with a vaulted ceiling.
Invest in Storage
The best-designed kitchens have a place for everything, and everything in its place. While it can be overwhelming to choose from the wide assortment of cabinet configurations available in most stock, semi-custom, and custom lines, it’s worth carefully reviewing all the storage options at your disposal before you settle on a kitchen design.
Popular kitchen storage features include wide drawers with built-in organizers that make small items a snap to find, pull-out pot drawers that give you easy access to all your cookware, and built-in pot lid holders that put the right lid at your fingertips. If you have the room for a walk-in pantry, don’t skimp on the storage features! A mix of shelves and bins will give you lots of flexibility when it comes to finding just the right place for your pantry essentials. Choose a mix of bin sizes to easily corral smaller items and hold bulkier ones.
Get Smart with Appliances
Today’s kitchen appliance choices are smarter than ever—from refrigerators with touchscreens that stream your favorite shows or display your cherished family photos, to ovens with LCD displays and delayed start time features that let you get a jump-start on dinner prep. A smart coffee maker is also a great choice, allowing you to operate it via Wifi from anywhere.
And when you have your hands full, a smart, touchless kitchen faucet will save the day—responding to your hand gestures with a motion sensor that knows just when you need the water on or off.
Turn Walls and Woodwork Into Statements
It’s likely that a lot of your kitchen wall space is taken up by cabinets and appliances. That means you might end up neglecting your kitchen walls, but that’s a big mistake. The right wall color can either blend in or stand out from your cabinets, reflecting the precise look you’re going for.
The designers at Studio McGee suggest using a soft green color for your kitchen walls for a serene look. Or think about using a contrasting color on exposed beams, shiplap, or other woodwork to draw attention to these architectural features and make them pop visually.
Mix & Match
If you’re like many homeowners, you would describe your home as having a single design style—whether craftsman, modern farmhouse, Victorian, coastal, or other. But if you stick too rigidly to one style, you could end up with a cookie cutter look.
Resist the temptation to adopt one design style exclusively and mix it up instead. If you’re a creative type, mixing and matching elements of multiple design styles can allow you to achieve a look that’s as unique as you. For example, Magnolia showcases kitchens that mix casual elements with splashes of glam, like a simple wood table surrounded by glossy light fixtures and vases.
The island is another place to mix and match with confidence. Try turning an interesting vintage furniture piece into a unique island base, then pair it with a sleek marble countertop for contrast. And don’t forget to mix textures in your kitchen—adding a textured runner atop a hardwood floor or sitting an intricately carved wooden serving bowl on a marble countertop.
No matter your style, the experts at Freedom can help you design that dream kitchen you’ve been longing for. Contact us today to get your project started.