Kitchen Cabinet Styles

Where is your product development headed?

Nothing dominates the design of a kitchen so much as the cabinets.  Cabinet colors and style define the remainder of the kitchen as well as being an expensive, long term investment.  Our analysis of the quantitative Houzz image data (see last blog post – “White Still Dominates” – for further background on this data) shows that, despite all the pandemic focus on redecorating, the fundamentals of kitchen design remain unchanged and straightforward. 

A few key facts: 

►  The top four finishes in kitchen cabinets are white (50%), medium wood (11%),  dark wood (9%) and gray (9%).

►  The top four cabinet styles are Shaker (31%),  flat panel (29%),  raised panel (16%) and recessed panel (16%).

►  The top four counter materials are Granite(32%), Quartz(28%), Quartzite(12%) and  marble (10%).

►  The top counter colors are white(52%), gray(17%) and black(10%).   

►  The top three backsplash colors are white(39%), gray(18%) and multi-colored(8%). 

Lest one begin to get depressed over the white and gray state of our color preferences today though, there is an undertone of beige that survives and continues, albeit at lower levels.  This hit me recently when my wife and I were working with a kitchen designer to redo an outdated kitchen in a rental property.  We went the conservative white and gray route because that’s what you do in a rental.  But I was struck by how much was offered in the beige and brown category for kitchen. 

Here’s a little support of that from the Houzz data.  Beige – down but not out and maybe the next big thing to warm up our homes once we tire of gray and white!

• 12% of kitchens have beige as their primary color, tied with gray
• 17% of backsplashes are beige.
• Beige is 17% of counter colors
• Light, medium and dark hardwoods make up 69% of flooring materials, all of which are easy to match to beige
• Light, medium and dark hardwoods make up 26% of cabinet colors, again, easy to match to beige

Is beige in your future?   

Design Research tracks design trends from quantitative sources to enable you, our clients and friends, to keep a balanced eye on real design trends.  Other resources use anecdotal mechanisms to announce and describe “trends” but, in our experience, if those trends are based merely on a few examples or on observations at trade shows, they don’t hold much value to designers and product developers who need to provide products that fit today’s kitchens.  While that article on tropical design influences from Sunday’s lifestyle section might have been very motivating to your design team, the reality is that only a small fraction of kitchens had a tropical theme in the last 18 months.  While all creative influences have value, they need to be linked to and tempered by concrete real-world parameters of balance.  We bring such realistic temperament to all of the design-related research projects we conduct for you as well.  Please don’t hesitate to reach out to learn more today.  Let us explain how we integrate color and design into our research.  We’re the only research company with the expertise to do that. 

This was the second in a series of planned articles about design trends.  Let us know if there is a specific topic in design that you have questions on.  Please call or email us today:  609-896-1108 or Rick@Designres.com