The 3 Biggest Trends in Kitchen Cabinetry

Kitchen cabinets go through trends every few years. Typically, a few designers begin experimenting with new styles, materials, or looks. They share those looks on social media and interior design magazines. They grow in popularity, and a few years later, they’re bonafide trends. If you want to get on the cutting edge of some coming kitchen cabinet trends, here they are.

 

1 — Open Shelving

 Open shelving can mean two similar things. An open shelf can be a cabinet that simply has no cabinet doors or not full cabinet doors. It can also mean freestanding shelving such as hanging over an island.

Open shelving has a few caveats that you should be aware of. For one, the interior of your shelf will be completely visible. Therefore, you need to makes ure you match the exterior as well as the interior of your shelf to your overall decor. If you have a cabinet door, then only the outside absolutely must match. With open shelves, everything becomes part of the overall look.

Also, you’ll need to make sure you have the dishes for it. You’ll typically see matching dining sets in an open cabinet; the matching sets might even match the overall decor. That’s a very cohesive look. However, you can have mismatched dining sets as long as the sets match either each other or the overall decor. For example, if you have a lot of neutral tones in your kitchen, you want to have neutral dining sets even if they don’t match each other.

 

2 — Custom Colors

 For a long time, cabinets were simply painted the same color as the walls. Now, the cabinets are design items themselves. That’s especially true if you have custom-designed cabinets. You want the artistry and the beauty of the wood to stand out. To do that, you’ll need a color for your cabinets that is different from the color for the walls. Many homeowners choose a transition color. For example, if you have white walls and black floors, you might choose gray cabinets.

 

3 — Exposed Grain

 Oak cabinets were popular from the 1970s and into the 1990s. They were gradually replaced by vinyl and other synthetics that are considered less expensive and easier to clean. Many people with wooden cabinets simply painted over them with an opaque paint. The pendulum is now swinging back towards exposed grain. Instead of painting those cabinets, you can just stain and seal them to allow the wood to shine through.