Thinking Beyond the Trend: Creative Kitchen Designs that Last
While it’s fun to incorporate trends into your interiors, relying on trends too heavily can mean your home feels dated before you’ve gotten a chance to truly enjoy it.
Trends come and go, but clever kitchen designs will stand the test of time. That’s not to say that trending elements can’t be incorporated into your renovation – in fact, we encourage drawing inspiration from trends on Pinterest or in design magazines – but to maximise your return on investment, it’s important to design your kitchen with the future in mind.
Even if you’re not planning to resell your property any time soon, being stuck with a kitchen whose design lifestyle is limited at best can be costly and stressful.
The good news is there are a few easy tricks to creating a kitchen that ticks the trend box without costing you a fortune to update down the track.
Master minimalism
If you type ‘modern kitchens’ into Pinterest or Google, you’ll find countless examples of minimalist design across just about every style. From industrial and ultra-modern, to sleek Scandinavian and country chic, the minimalist concept has been wholeheartedly embraced in trending kitchen designs.
Early converts tried to cut down the kitchen by shrinking work surfaces and joinery, also doing away with any unnecessary visual appliances. While the result is ultra-sleek, functionality can be the victim of this trend.
Master minimalism through a streamlined colour palette and seamless joinery. It’s true that less is more visually, but don’t compromise on functional bench space for the sake of form. Investigate concealed storage solutions to keep benches free from clutter.
Create living areas with longevity
It’s increasingly rare to find a property with separate living and kitchen areas, as open plan living has become all but standard in modern floorplans.
When it comes to balancing the design of your living and kitchen areas, plenty of people fall into the trap of sacrificing kitchen space in favour of larger, luxurious living areas. Kitchens along one wall are typical of many new apartments, for example, but don’t offer enough bench space to pose a liveable, long-term home.
Instead of shrinking the kitchen to maximise the lounge room, choose flooring that can flow between the two zones (ideally a singular material). This immediately makes both areas feel bigger, as the eye doesn’t delineate the two zones based on the change in flooring.
You can still help to distinguish the living area from the kitchen in other ways, such as with your furniture placement or a rug.
Have fun with fittings
One of the easiest ways to stay current with design trends without committing to a full renovation is to change up your fittings.
If you’re planning a kitchen from scratch, choose whichever fittings best suit the design style you’re going for – just make sure that your choices are easy to swap out later on without major work.
Down the track, you’ll be able to give your kitchen a low-cost, high-impact makeover by changing light features, tapware, cabinet hardware and decor to suit modern trends.
Get crafty with colours
Similar to fittings, colours come in and out of trend in the blink of an eye and have the ability to date kitchen designs within a matter of years.
If you have the means and time to replace coloured cabinetry as it dates (or the patience to put up with it), then the colour trend is all yours to explore and enjoy.
If not? By opting for timeless cabinetry and surface designs, and introducing colour with a painted feature wall and bold accessories, you can quickly adapt to trends with an inexpensive lick of paint and trip to a homewares store.
The takeaway of creative kitchen designs that go the distance is to create a classic foundation, then add your chosen trends in the most functional, versatile way possible.
Looking for more design inspiration? You’ll find it in our exclusive eBook, where we cover design elements like colour, layout and lighting to help you create a kitchen you’ll enjoy for years to come. Download it here.
Ready to commit to a kitchen renovation? Start your journey by booking a consultation with us here.
