I have a chimney/island mount hood purchased from www.futurofuturo.com and so far I am really liking it. It is fairy quiet and seems very efficient. It has 950 cfm.

We have the Symbol 48" but they have other very sleek looking designs as well.

VentAHood is highly thought of by many. Mine has been ordered but hasn't arrived yet. (There is no place for it to go yet - still waiting for cabinets to arrive before starting demo.)

Link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: VentAHood Island hoods

love2cook4six, Wow beautiful kitchen! Thanks for the info and site. I saw a couple I like. paul ma, Are you doing the remodel yourself? We did. It's taken us a year. Only because we bought a whole house fixer upper and had other projects going at the same time. Down to a hood vent and backsplash and we're done in the kitchen. Thanks for the quick link, I'm going to check it out now.

Cade, I'm not sure of your budget but if you are looking in the lower price range, I bought a Lux-Air (= no name!) hood and am happy with it, so far.

You can see it if you scroll down in the thread linked below. I paid $850. It looks good to us, but I'm sure it is noisier than a better brand would be. It seems to work well so far (we've had it installed about 2 months), for our needs (mostly steaming/boiling, very little frying, hardly any meat or fish). I think it depends how much you will use it/what for.

If I'd had the budget, I would have bought the hood that Loves2Cook has, its beautiful!

We also did our kitchen renovation ourselves (well, DH did most of it!) and have also renovated a whole house (fixer upper) as well. We are near the end too :)

Here is a link that might be useful: island hood thread

It sounds like you are looking for style over function. An island hood requires a much larger capture area to be effective. Our Wolf Pro Island hood is 34"x42" for our 36" 6-burner gas rangetop. Choosing something because it is sleek and has glass kinda defeats the purpose of the hood... which is to capture cooking gases and grease. Most of the ones I have seen like you mention are not very deep and consequently don't work very well in an island configuration.

I'd forget about the Sones ratings as I don't think they mean anything for a real-world installation. Most island hoods with built-in blowers tend to be noisy, which is why we are going to use a remote blower with it's own silencer. Obviously, this is not for everyone because of cost and installation considerations.

You really do need to consider what type of cooking appliance you are planning to use: gas, electric, or electric induction before you can determine your CFM requirements. Gas will have the highest CFM requirement because of the waste heat that needs to be removed. Consult the manufacturer of your cooking appliance for CFM requirements... a very general rule of thumb is add up the total BTU/hr output of the burners and divide by 100. Thus, if you had 60,000 BTU/hr you would need about 600 CFM. Keep in mind that vent hood ratings are at zero static pressure with no resistance... so your actual CFM will be less than rated.

You also need to consider where the island is located and whether you want cooking odors traveling thoughout the house. Many island configurations are in open-concept kitchens which makes it harder to contain cooking odors.

Mayland, I do like that vent. When I went to the link I started reading the thread where some people don't have a vent. I have that open kitchen concept that tom in seattle mentioned. Our living area is 30'x30' and a vent hanging doesnt appeal to me. I wanted the down draft venting but we couldn't do it. So it's either a minimal vent or nothing. Tom in seattle, thanks for the info, you have me rethinking the vent. I fry onions every once in a while and the odor stays around for days. I'd hate to put a vent in and find out it's useless.