Seasons Change, and so do Design Trends

All of these design choices were at one point and time highly sought after. When it comes to kitchen design, trends can change quickly so don’t feel badly if your home resembles one or more of these trends. With every change, we also see changes in design aesthetics, from colours, to metals, light to dark, and many more. Let’s look back at some past design trends that have inspired updated or current versions.

Defaulting to Stainless Steel

Listen we get it stainless has been a goal for people to achieve for a long time. Stainless costs a bit more than other materials and it has a history and promotion of being high end and fancy, which it has been and still is. It’s a functional material when used properly, but it can still dent and scratch like everything else. If stainless is your goal, that’s fantastic, let’s build the kitchen around that look and feel. But consider that now we have new companies and old ones that are experimenting with color and texture. For a long time we only had 3 choices, white, black, and stainless. Now we have all the colors of the rainbow. Designing a kitchen with that in mind will have a much greater impact not just on the little details but on the overall look. SO have fun and explore your choices.

Poorly located Power

With all the gadgets and tools we have available and often used to make a meal it would be nice to work in a kitchen where we had ample power and in the right spots. This seems to be crazy but it’s not unheard of to have a tablet out with a recipe, a sous vide machine going and with that a vacuum sealer, maybe a blender to make a puree, and a small spice grinder. The list goes on; slow cooker, instapot, and all types of mixers, machines, and pots. Two outlets depending on code just isn’t cutting it anymore, and no one wants the hazard of using a power bar on their countertop. We do have to be careful not to completely ruin a backsplash with all these ports we are putting through it by simple just adding more. There are some solutions, larger outlets for four instead of the traditional two. Some that have usb ports as well. Also one really nice idea is a power bar but properly installed either into or onto the underside of the upper cabinets so that it’s not in the wall at all. With that there are a lot of design changes that might occur like raising the cabinets for a valance or hiding the electrical inside the cabinet. Either way always consult a pro that can answer all these changes that could arise.

Corner Pantries

Sometimes it’s just the card we’ve been dealt when buying or moving into a house. If you have the opportunity to avoid them, or when doing a reno removing them and it’s in your budget, do it. We could do a whole blog on why these aren’t the greatest option when designing a kitchen. The long and short of it is the space they take up, as well as the space that it creates, both inside and outside of it, could be used much more usefully and efficiently. They only give the illusion of much more storage than they often provide. There are numerous corrections to this but each case has different variables so consult, you guessed it, a designer or watch out for a possible blog on this.

What are your kitchen design pet peeves?

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