Kitchen Trends You Might Consider
If you're looking to renovate your home's kitchen, or are having a home built and need to work with the architect on the kitchen design, you want to ensure you give plenty of thought as to the layout and appearance of this space. A kitchen should be an attractive room you love to work in, but it also needs to be very functional and offer lots of storage. To ensure you create a new kitchen space that you'll love for many years to come, note a few trends that you might consider for your home's renovation or design.
Small appliances
For many years, oversized appliances were very popular, with homeowners choosing six-burner stovetops and commercial-sized refrigerators for their homes. However, unless you have a large family and cook multi-course meals, these appliances can be a waste of space and energy. In many families today, all the adults in the home work fulltime jobs, so they may tend to prefer smaller meals that are faster and easier to prepare, and which don't require six burners or a double oven.
Families might also choose more prepared foods from the supermarket, so they don't need as much storage space in the refrigerator. This also means fewer dishes to wash every night! In turn, you might opt for a three-burner stove, a scaled-down dishwasher, and an apartment-sized refrigerator, so you can better utilize the space in your kitchen.
Rethinking the fridge
Rather than an actual refrigerator, you might prefer cooling stations that are at various areas of the kitchen. For example, have a cooling station or small refrigerator built into the lower cabinets near the sink, for easier transport of fresh food items. Another cooling station might be built into cabinets near the kitchen's entryway, so that children can easily access soda or a snack, without getting near a hot stovetop or being underfoot in the kitchen.
Easy accessibility
The accessibility of everything in the kitchen is important for anyone, but especially for those who are getting older and who will want to stay in their home for as long as possible. An oven built into the wall means no bending and lifting to remove heavy food items. Upper cabinet shelves that slide out and that have elbows with hinges can allow you to lower those shelves, for easier access. Slide-out shelves in lower cabinets can also mean less bending to reach items stored there. These accessible features can then make your kitchen more functional and more comfortable for you overall.