The British summertime is well and truly here – about time! – and it brings with it a whole range of fascinating kitchen design trends. As a designer kitchen specialist, you can count on us to have our finger on the pulse, so this week we’re bringing you the hottest trends that are shaking up the world of kitchen design.
These are amongst our favourite styles of kitchen here at Kitchen Design Centre, so we’re happy to see the rest of the nation apparently agrees with us! It’s gaining lots of traction abroad too, taking the Scandinavian design world by storm in recent months.
Industrial kitchens are a distinctive mix of form, function and aesthetics. At heart they’re raw, powerful workhorses, characterised by design details like exposed brickwork and pipes, rustic metals. They’re designed to emulate the image of a traditional factory floor – which explains a lot about why they’re so popular up North, in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution! Industrial style kitchens look especially imposing in rooms with high ceilings and exposed beams, but even without those elements they’re still an impressive sight, blending beautiful materials like wood, concrete and stainless steel.
One of our recent blog posts goes into full detail about why we love them – but no doubt you get the gist already!
When it comes to colour schemes in kitchens, the growing popularity of grey is hardly surprising. After all, it’s replete with a chic elegance that can give any kitchen a supremely luxurious feel – especially when used with plenty of natural light. It’s also fantastic as a base colour, with a wonderful ability to highlight bolder, accent colours in your kitchen. This opens up a world of design possibilities; you can use grey for your worktops or cabinetry to draw the eye to splashes of colour to a particular appliance, like a ruby-red range cooker.
Meanwhile, copper accents are finding increasing popularity in these more neutrally-coloured kitchens. This can be in the form of copper handles for drawers and cabinets, for example, or beautifully rustic utensils like a copper-coloured kettle – to give your kitchen a touch of old-world charm
If nothing else, the general direction of recent design trends is teaching us that as time goes on, the quality and value of materials is becoming an ever-more important consideration. The clearest example of this is in the rising popularity of quartz worktops.
Once seen as a supreme luxury, quartz worktops are becoming more and more accessible with the development of composite surfaces. Today, manufacturers can provide a wide range of quartz shades and designs to choose from, including those with elaborate swirling details and intricate veins to imitate other natural stone materials. Upgrading your worktops from laminate to quartz and other natural stones can work wonders to give your kitchen a classy, refined feel at only a modest price increase.
One of the fastest-growing trends in 2017, the colour green is making a comeback in a big way. It’s not hard to see why it’s becoming especially popular in the spring and summer, given its associations with fresh life and new beginnings. As a species we also tend to associate it with regeneration and prosperity, which are some lovely and homely connotations for your kitchen to have given its role as the very heart of the home.
There’s no shortage of ways to add a bit of green to your kitchen – although depending on the shade, you may want to keep it restrained, just in case! It can be in the fabrics of your kitchen (like the cushions for your kitchen furniture), the appliances like your ovens or microwaves, or even in the smaller utensils like toasters and kettles. If you fancy it, it can even make an amazing colour for your kitchen cabinets, although unless you’re certain of a vibrant shade it’s always best to err on the side of keeping it neutral.
Maybe you can draw on this summer’s hottest trends for some inspiration for your own kitchen – or maybe you’ve got something completely different in mind! Whatever the case, at Kitchen Design Centre, we’re here to help make your dream kitchen a reality. Feel free to stop by any of our designer kitchen showrooms in Blackburn, Manchester or Colne, where our friendly and talented designers will be on hand for anything you might need.
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