Spring Makeover

It's spring and most of the new product introductions will be making their appearances over the next month or so. We’ve seen a lot of the new cabinet introductions already, and I can tell you they are more modern looking in both shape and colors.

Grays are warmer with tones of taupe and tan. Door styles continue to be offered in traditional raised panel or shaker style, but have additional options of edge profiles, additional grooved moldings, and some have curved or “pillowed” profiles that soften the industrial look.

Cabinet companies that used to offer only the traditional framed options are now beginning to manufacture frameless cabinets as well. These tend to be more modern looking as frameless cabinets do not have a face frame on the front of the box – the doors and drawers ARE the fronts of the cabinet boxes. These are often times used in more contemporary kitchens, commercial kitchens, and next time you are sitting in the exam room waiting for your doctor to come in, you’ll notice they probably have frameless cabinets there too.

Cabinets are becoming more and more the focal point of houses. Kitchens are the hub of entertainment and so wide open access to that area is more popular in new construction and also in remodeling. Walls that used to divide kitchens from dining and living areas are being removed to create more open floor plans. This means cabinets, countertops and backsplashes are front and center and “on display.” People use this openness to show them off.

We also see a lot of the remodels now removing the soffits that were once popular and instead taking the cabinets all the way to the ceiling, providing more storage space and eliminating that feeling of the low ceiling. Instead, the kitchen is “taller” and feels more expansive.

It seems like today’s kitchen designs are able to make better use of smaller floor plans as well with all the internal cabinet components that beef up your storage capacities. It’s not uncommon for the kitchen designs to include trash pullouts and base tray divider cabinets to house cookie sheets, muffin tins and cutting boards. There’s an assortment of pullout options for spices, cooking and baking dishes, and even organizers for lids, pans and cutlery. With all these options, you just need to tell us where they should be based on your cooking style, and we can get your kitchen efficiently organized!

There are other elements being incorporated to make kitchens more efficient, like multiple sinks, pot-fillers behind the cooktop, multiple ovens, microwave drawers, pop-up vents, sink disposal buttons and compost canisters.

Even with all these more modern amenities, we can’t lose focus of the “timeless” kitchen. One of the biggest concerns people have with remodels or even building new is that they don't want to create a space that’s too trendy and will be outdated in a few years.

I think there are a couple of ways to keep the cabinets timeless. One is to go with an opaque finish in a cream color. This is neutral so if you opted to go with gray highlights either in paint or accessories, you can change that to a warmer color in the future and your cabinets are still “fresh.” You can also go with a dark colored wood stain. This also will be neutral because over the years and exposure to ultraviolet light, it can’t yellow (remember the oak everyone is trying to replace, paint or decorate around now). If you go with darker cabinets now, you won’t have that issue a few years down the road.

Both of these colors are neutral and regardless of door style chosen, can coordinate with your countertops and backsplash, so if you wanted to go trendy, the backsplash is something that can easily be replaced ten years from now and would be a much less expensive update than new cabinets.

No matter what, each year we will have a spring with new product introductions. We’ll see some pretty cool things that we may have or want to have or we may see some things that will leave us scratching our heads wondering why anyone would want that as an option. Either way, it’s great because we will have choices. Go check out your local showroom for options and see if there is anything you can’t live without!

#homeessentials