Hear from kitchen designers about what’s got their showrooms abuzz. Bill Hecht, President
Jinny Plasse, Design Consultant
David Hecht Custom Kitchen Centre
Norwich, Connecticut
www.davidhechtkitchens.com
Our traditional New England kitchens will have maple or cherry cabinets with raised panel doors. We used to do a dark finish with oak. But now we’re doing a light finish with maple.
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Or we’re doing a glaze on top of a
stain. Maybe a natural maple door with a light brown glaze as an accent.
The glaze outlines the shapes to give a worn country look. Red birch is
also popular because of the availability of the trees here in New
England. It gives a traditional look, and it’s a wood that looks like
natural cherry but doesn’t darken and mellow. Traditional-style hardware
would be brass or the next new thing—pewter. We’re also using off-white
paint on cabinets or shades of green and burgundy. Large crown moulding tops it off.
The contemporary look is coming back. The trend is toward a softer, warmer contemporary—not as glossy as the high shine of the ’80s. Our contemporary kitchens will have a smaller moulding than the traditional kitchens—something like a 1.5-inch, double bull-nose moulding to give a linear look. Then we’ll use a Shaker door in cherry with a clear finish and a flat panel and frame around the door. We have vertical nickel handles that run from 8 inches to 30 inches from the top to the bottom of the door. We can take a simple looking door and put that hardware on it and it makes a contemporary statement, but not a shiny or industrial one. It’s still sleek but warmer.
People want more natural light in their kitchens, so they’re taking down walls to put in bigger windows, and there go the cabinets. We’re seeing this more, particularly along the coast where they want the view. To make up for the lost storage space, we’re putting more accessories in drawers and using partitions in deep drawers to store individual plates.
Depending on the hardware, you can completely change the look of the cabinets. Stainless steel hardware works well with modern. You can have different finishes on the hardware, ranging from rust to black. Hardware is very popular because it’s a way to make the kitchen unique. There are whimsical choices—a lot of tubular and curved handles. In a more contemporary streamlined look, you’ll see chrome, brushed chrome, and stainless steel. A traditional kitchen might have brass knobs.
In mouldings, people are going for subdued. Moulding that’s a double bull nose doesn’t designate your cabinets to any real style. They’re not looking to make a statement with their mouldings and trim. With some cabinets, it’s gone entirely.
Sally Ann Sullivan, Certified Kitchen Designer
Showcase Kitchens and Baths
Tulsa, Oklahoma
www.kitchenandbathshowcase.com
Traditional kitchens here are based on the style of the home. And the popular style now is French country. We’ll do a rub-through for a finish. It leaves a little color in the crevices to look like the piece was once painted or so old that it has dust in the corners. We call it the restoration look. Traditional is home-and-hearth—not country but country estate. We might do special pairs of cabinet doors—left and right arched doors with very unobtrusive wood knobs in the same color as the cabinet finish or a forged iron knob for a casual effect or forged brass for a furniture feel. We’re doing furniture feet on the cabinets and extensive mouldings—rope, dentil, fluting, and others that can cost up to 25 percent of the budget.
Contemporary is a soft contemporary: Shaker style with a recessed panel door. The finish is very smooth, with no distressing and it relies on the wood grain itself to carry the door. We use not a clear stain but a light one. When mixed with slab doors, the grain runs the same way on doors and drawers. It’s a clean, uncluttered look. The hardware is completely different from traditional. It’s part of the artistic statement. We’re seeing stainless steel pulls and touch-and-release latches. Contemporary mouldings are minimal and uncluttered. And we’re seeing more glass doors in soft contemporary: austral glass, an art glass that you can’t quite see through; ribbed glass that’s like corduroy; stainless inserts that give the feel of glass; colored glass; brushed metallic laminate; silver dot laminate; and hammered copper.
People have stopped looking at just the fronts of cabinets. They want all these fabulous interior accessories. Plain rollout shelves left with the Model T. Now the interiors are organized for plates and pots and pans in heavy-duty rollouts. Any base cabinet with a door is expected to have rollout shelves. Recycle centers are also in big demand. Appliance garages don’t use tambour doors any more but doors that pull out flat and then push in at the top.
John Rowland
Co-owner
Palm Bay Kitchens & Baths
Naples, Florida
www.palmbaykitchens.com
Traditional is by far the most popular look here. On the east coast of Florida, they do more contemporary. A traditional kitchen will have a raised panel, miter-corner door. We’re leaning toward glazed finishes that accent the form of the door. A dark brown mocha on top of a medium-tone maple will give a warm, cozy look. The white and pickled cabinets of southern Florida are out.
The Old World look has really caught on in our area, with lots of woodcarvings and elaborate hardware. There’s a lot more detail and more architectural treatments than we’ve seen before. People want to make more of a statement. We’re seeing a lot of wood accenting and detailing. There are a lot of different choices. By far the most popular are carved wood pieces and architectural woodcarvings: corbels around a wood hood, crown mouldings with hand-carved designs, carvings above the fridge on a blank panel, French curves. This look is in because we had tropical for so long that people got tired of it. We’re doing white kitchens on remodeling jobs. They’ve usually decided to remodel in the first place because the current space is too small and dark so they want to open it up with a lighter look. We see this particularly in beach condos where they want the beachfront look.
In the last 10 years there has been a huge change in the kitchen industry with an explosion of different choices, looks, and products. In particular, companies are coming out with more decorative hardware. Hardware has gotten to be a more difficult choice. People spend as much time picking out hardware as they do the main cabinets. Door styles and colors are more limited, but with hardware you can get many different looks. Sleek contemporary poles or wrought iron can be put on traditional cabinets; old rust finishes are popular.
Pat Allen
Co-owner
Rainier Cabinetry & Design
Seattle, Washington
www.rainiercabinetry.com
If you’re looking for authenticity, then you should aim for the door styles, finishes, and trim to work together. But if you’re looking for a more casual look, then you can mix the styles a bit. Trends are a bit more toward the authentic and formal than in the past.
Popular products include pullout tables, fancier cabinet trims, recycle stations, and unusual colors and finishes. The pullout table extends 5 feet from the cabinets and folds back up into it. You can use whatever wood top you want. We’ve installed it coming off the end of an island or out the back side of a peninsula in the dining area. It looks like a regular cabinet. Pullout recycle areas are also very important in the Seattle area. We install pullout baskets and bins that can be removed for emptying. We’re installing these in lieu of a trash compactor; people are more concerned about recycling than smashing their trash.
Glazing is popular now. It was popular in the ’50s and ’60s when it was called antiquing. We’ll do a cherry with a black glaze; or maple or pine with a light or dark glaze over a light stain. We can do the glaze over a natural wood or one stained a sunshine color. A darker glaze gives an older look. We’re also doing cottage finishes—painted finishes that have been rubbed off and banged up to appear worn. It’s popular with women but the men don’t understand why you’d pay for something to look old and beat up! Taupes and sages are popular colors.
Ryan Day
Manager
House of Cabinetry
Winfield, Kansas
www.houseofcabinetry.com
Geographic location will be a factor in hardware selection. The magazines show a lot of contemporary, which is not what we’re doing around here. We’re doing quite a bit of brass and porcelain for traditional and country kitchens. We’re doing more antique brass than the polished. We haven’t sold any of the colored glass knobs, though we’re doing some brushed chrome because the stainless steel appliances have come back. The look is nothing fancy, just your basic knob or pull.
Some people who’ve had knobs before say they don’t want them in their next kitchen because they catch their clothes on them, so they’ll go with pulls instead. We have a hands-on display in the showroom that lets people make sure they can get their hands around the knob—that there’s enough clearance between the face of the cabinet and the part of the knob that you grab.
Adjustable hinges are so critical, especially in the full-overlay style where the doors and drawers are butted together. The three-way adjustable hinge lets you line up the drawers and doors so that everything hangs all in line. The very last thing we do, which is very critical in the full overlay design, is make sure everything is adjusted to line up properly.
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