Name the one room in your home that you probably spend the most time especially during the past year during these COVID times. Chances are, it’s your kitchen.
The whole family gathers in our kitchen throughout the day. We need our kitchens to be functional yet comfortable. You want to be capable of baking a cake or hosting a dinner party at any time.
A recent survey of over 2,000 homeowners by Houzz found that many homeowners are reconsidering their kitchens. Primarily, they’re concerned about kitchen storage, but many are looking for spaces that better fit their personal style.
Top 2021 Kitchen Trends
Kitchens and their islands are expanding and this part of the home these days is the new dining room. Here are a few kitchen trends we’re seeing for 2021.
Increased Cabinet Storage
According to Houzz, almost all the kitchen renovations made at least some sort of change to their cabinet layout. Around 28% increased their cabinet space.
Much of this expansion has to do with our increased time at home. We found ourselves buying more household supplies and groceries. While we needed those extra items, many homeowners found themselves lacking in space to store their stockpiled goods.
For this reason, many of the kitchen trends are adding cabinetry or reorganizing their existing cabinets to enhance their storage capacity.
Bigger Pantries
Pantries have been an essential part of kitchens for centuries. A dedicated pantry space helps organize all your food and grocery shopping. While they’ve gone in and out of vogue, they have been a must-have item in contemporary homes for some time.
Dovetailing off the increased kitchen storage trend, the motto for 2021 is, “the bigger the pantry, the better.” The demand for pantries rose during 2020. Of homeowners doing kitchen renovations, 13% added a walk-in pantry. Others just wanted to update their pantry storage to maximize its space.
As an added benefit to having a pantry, simply close the door and still have a neat and organized kitchen.
Vinyl Flooring
Kitchen floors experience a lot of traffic and a lot of debris. We need our flooring to be durable and easy to clean. That’s why in 2020, vinyl flooring took a bite out of the hardware flooring trend. Installations rose from 13% to 19% in 2020 because vinyl is easy to install and easy to disinfect. Plus, it holds up well to frequent traffic and liquid spills. Expect a continued rise in vinyl flooring installs in the kitchen to continue throughout the year.
Contrasting Kitchen Islands
The 2021 kitchen trends are starting to move towards increased personalization. One way homeowners are achieving this by changing their kitchen islands to have contrasting colors that don’t exactly conform to the rest of their kitchen cabinets.
The color change isn’t drastic, as the color choices tend to compliment the color palette for the kitchen renovation. However, we can expect more standout islands that take advantage of color and texture to create visual contrast in the space.
Dark Kitchens
White has been popular because it’s easy to look streamlined and clean while brightening up a room. However, that clean look is starting to feel sterilized. The homeowners are becoming tired of seeing the same generic white kitchen. Now dark kitchens are becoming a thing.
Don’t shy away from black kitchen walls, cabinetry, or work surfaces. When it’s executed well, a black kitchen looks luxurious and inviting. Pair it with natural materials that have texture or metallic shine, and you’ll create a sleek and dramatic kitchen.
Colorful Kitchens
Another move away from the white kitchen, the trend is to add more color into our cooking spaces. After all, if we’re spending so much time in the kitchen, why can’t it feel more in character with the rest of the house?
People are bringing more materials and colors that are both functional and beautiful for the kitchen space. These moves include using interesting tiles for creative kitchen backsplashes or changing the millwork around our kitchen. Artwork is finding its way into the kitchen, as are displays of antique kitchen wares. The result is beautiful kitchens that better reflect our individual styles.
Metallics
The metallic interior design trend is moving into our kitchen. Not only are metallics sleek and beautiful, but they have integrity to their construction.
Today, construction advanced enable us to have a wide choice of metallic hardware in our kitchens. Forget the generic stainless-steel look. We can have faucets and sinks of gold or beaten copper. Adding beautiful metallic contrasts in the kitchen enhances the overall aesthetics of the room.
Handle Free Design
People still appreciate streamlined, thoughtful looks. One of the latest styles in contemporary kitchen design takes advantage of push-open and close doors that remove the handles from our kitchen cabinets. Essentially, the handle-free kitchen cabinet design creates a simple look that allows us to focus on the artistry of the cabinets themselves.
Even if push-open cupboards aren’t your thing, some are comprising on the look by opting for recessed handles that can be contrasted in color and material to add visual interest.
The Broken Floor Plan
Open concept kitchens have dominated our home designs for quite some time. The work-from-home environment is changing our desire for free-flowing spaces. Instead, the home renovation trend aims to create more distinct zones between the kitchen area in the rest of the home.
We’re seeing this in complete kitchen renovations in how they layout the new kitchen and create nooks for cooking and relaxing. For those who need a more budget-friendly kitchen update, freestanding cabinetry and furniture create a distinct space.
Designing Your Kitchen
View your kitchen as an expression of yourself. Yes, you want to design it to be functional for your family’s needs. For many of us, that’s efficiently using storage and potentially adding more storage. But why can’t a kitchen be both functional and beautiful? Get some inspiration for your future kitchen from these 2021 design trends.
