Kitchen Trends: What Is Worth Doing and What Dates

Every year produces a list of kitchen trends, and most of those lists are finishes. Finishes date. The things worth spending on are the ones that change how the room works, because those are still working when the color has gone out of fashion.

Here is how we sort them when a client brings us a photograph.

Worth doing: storage that opens properly

Deep drawers instead of base cabinets with doors. You see what is at the back without kneeling on the floor and reaching past everything in front. A corner unit that actually presents its contents rather than swallowing them.

This is not a trend so much as a correction. It changes the room every day and it does not look dated, because nobody notices it. They just stop losing things.

Worth doing: lighting in layers

One ceiling fixture lights the room and shadows the counter, because you stand between the light and what you are chopping. Light under the wall cabinets fixes that.

Planned lighting is cheap while the walls are open and expensive afterward. It is the single change people most often say they wish they had done.

Worth doing: a run of clear counter

Somewhere to put a hot pan down near the range, and somewhere to work that is not the same surface as the sink. Uninterrupted counter is worth more than an extra cabinet, and it is the first thing sacrificed when a plan tries to fit too much in.

Careful: open shelving

It photographs well and it holds less. It also puts everything on display, which means everything on it has to be worth displaying and has to be dusted.

A short run of it near where you make coffee works. A whole wall of it is the thing people quietly put doors back on.

Careful: the statement finish

A strongly colored cabinet, a dramatic veined stone, a hardware shape that is everywhere right now. These are the choices most likely to look of their decade.

If you want one, put it somewhere you can change. An island painted a strong color can be repainted. A whole kitchen in the same finish cannot, and you will be looking at it long after the magazines have moved on.

Careful: technology in the cabinetry

A faucet you wave at and a refrigerator with a screen in the door are pleasant until the part fails and the replacement is discontinued. Cabinetry outlasts electronics by a long way.

Power where you need it, and enough of it, ages better than anything with a chip in it.

The test

Ask whether the thing changes how you move through the room or how the room looks. Both are legitimate. Only one of them is still paying you back long after the finish has stopped looking new, and it is worth knowing which you are buying.

We design kitchens in Orange County and northern Bergen County and we will tell you honestly which side of that line a photograph falls on. Book a consultation and bring the pictures.