‘Red Kitchen’ is a gut renovation that turned an unusable U-shaped kitchen into a highly functional space for a bachelor client. The renovation involved expanding the existing footprint 20 square feet to accommodate a deeper refrigerator, increasing hidden and visible storage space, and finishing the space with a bold new color and material palette. An existing wall was shifted into an adjoining room to accommodate a 24-inch-deep refrigerator, which anchors the layout.

The kitchen, approximately 110 square feet, offers ample storage in overhead and base cabinets alike. The latter are designed extra deep to allow the client to easily grab heavy pots and other large kitchenware. A deep corner cabinet—the result of the deep refrigerator—is optimized with a blind corner pull out. A chase that once penetrated through the counter and upper cabinets was used to create an overhead nook of shallow multi-level shelving to hold smaller items like spice bottles and wine glasses, and abuts a corner of additional open shelving for larger items like big coffee mugs and cookbooks.

Driven by a red color scheme, the color palette of the glass-tiled backsplash is a bright red interspersed with shades and tones of black and gray, grounded by planes of gray and black in the counters and floor, respectively. The bold band of color that punctuates the perimeter of the space contrasts dramatically with the cabinetry, painted stray satin lacquer white with a hint of mercury. Wavy glass in the overhead cabinet doors offers the client’s desired translucency without revealing everything inside. The cabinet interiors are laminated in a medium gray to give depth and draw the eye upward. The glass reappears in the pulls and knobs and four iconic schoolhouse pendant lights, adding a finishing touch to the clean, luminous space.