Essential: Subway Tile While we’re talking hard surfaces, here’s another key transitional style staple: subway tile. Whether you go for seamless off-white grout or a darker accent tone, humble white subway tile carries a timeless sense of elegance and simplicity, holding its own without fighting to be the star of the show.
Essential: Sparkling Stone For quite a time, dark granite was widely seen as the top choice for countertops. But for a coveted transitional style, a lightly flecked or veined marble or quartz brings a mature sensibility without looking heavy. It’s just rich enough to suit the more traditional elements, but crisp enough to also work with contemporary accents. It’s great for all of the counters, or with a contrast stone or butcher block on an island for pleasing contrast.
Essential: Rich Woods Mixing these broad strokes of crisp paint with wood brings in much needed texture, so it’s very common to see transitional kitchens with wood floors, wood bar stools and butcher block counters. Flooring planks in a herringbone layout bring additional richness, playing up the positives of traditional parquet floors in a way that doesn’t feel stuck in the past.
Perhaps the best example of this balancing of traditional and contemporary elements is the Shaker style cabinet front. These cabinet doors and drawers typically have a flat panel in the middle with a raised flat border at the edges and no “profiling” (i.e., no fancy curved molding). This gives a bit more richness than a minimalist flat-front cabinet without feeling fussy. Cabinets in this style would have traditionally been wood toned, as built by the original Shakers, but they achieve a nice balance of old and new when painted in a crisp, contemporary shade.
Often this means taking evocative traditional shapes and applying a contemporary finish to them. For example, take a look at this beautiful bridge faucet. It’s a very traditional style of faucet, but when used in an au courant brass finish (as opposed to, say, a rustic blackened bronze), it feels quite contemporary.
Transitional style is a highly coveted kitchen look, and yet many people don’t even know how to define it, let alone put it together on their own. This not-quite-modern, not-quite-traditional style has lots of room for self-expression, but there are common elements you can rely on to guide your design process. The Basics: Mixing Old and New Fundamentally, transitional style is all about balancing traditional and contemporary elements to achieve an elegant style that doesn’t feel too stuffy or minimalist.
This kitchen is organized, but it’s certainly not minimalist. Reclaimed and repurposed materials create a unique design that’s full of personality. A combination of offbeat shelves and wall-mounted open storage — along with vintage storage tins, a box for condiments and a weathered cutlery tray — provide a home for everything, but also lots of personality. For a space that’s even more streamlined yet still filled with character, attach more storage to the walls to free up work surfaces.
Multipurpose table on wheels that can be tucked under the large island to create a breakfast bar, and rolled out to accommodate more formal occasions when needed.
Lounge-style banquette. Architect did away with a formal dining room to triple the size of this kitchen and add a generous lounge-style white leather banquette smack dab in the middle to accommodate large family gatherings. The banquette surrounds a graphic granite slab table. The back of the seating forms a black quartz island work surface with cabinets below.
La collection entiere.....
In this modern farmhouse kitchen, a large trough sink is equipped with inserts for cutting and organizing food. The chalkboard cutting board comes with food-safe chalk for writing messages or menu items.
Typically, you’d find marble slabs used as countertop material, and something like reclaimed wood used to wrap an island. But in this kitchen Calacatta Viola marble makes a dramatic statement. OR TRY A FLOOR-LAMINATED VINYL PRINT ! - you can change it easily when the mood takes you !
In thiS kitchen, black-painted floating shelves against a black-painted wall make the shelves virtually disappear, while white dishes seem to float. It’s a great design approach for compact layouts because it can give the appearance of more space and set off statement elements like a large island.
When it comes to kitchen remodeling, we often have to make sacrifices to stay within a budget. But that doesn’t mean we have to completely let go of our dreams. This homeowner really wanted a metal range hood, but it just wasn’t in the budget. Instead, her designer came up with a custom hood made out of wood, and hired a painter to make it look like metal.
We’ve seen just about every dedicated storage system in a kitchen, but this one really takes the … er … loaf. A soft-close drawer hides a special pullout breadboard with its own crumb catcher.
Copper is expensive, but if you have a small surface area behind your range, the material can make a standout backsplash for a relatively low cost per square foot.
Here’s a neat design move for a kitchen island. Bleached sycamore legs turn one end into a furniture-style seating area, creating a hybrid look.
In this kitchen, the range backsplash gives the impression that old brick was found behind the wall during the renovations. This adds age, history and an interesting texture to the room.
The undermounted sink on the island includes a cutting board and dish drainer.
A framed glass-tile backsplash adds interest and texture behind the cooktop.
A glass-front cabinet shows off colorful dishes. Bringing the cabinet down to counter level adds more storage. Stacking the microwave, oven and warming drawer adds efficiency.
The five-burner, duel-fuel convection range has a separate baking drawer for more cooking options. The wood frame on the vent hood was painted to match the surrounding cabinetry for a cohesive look. The existing linoleum floor was upgraded to white oak to match the hardwood in adjacent spaces.
A 36-inch-wide corner pantry cabinet was built on-site and a glass-front cabinet on top holds the homeowners’ favourite serving platters found during a trip to Italy.
Muted blue and gray mosaic tiles form a soft, calming backsplash. Milk-white, highly polished quartz countertops feature touches of muted grey - a wonderful texture that also brings in some color. The matte finish on the tiles is a counterpoint to the shiny counters. It’s nice to mix up finishes.
Elegant steel-blue pendant lights with a teardrop silhouette hang over the new island (a splurge) The island includes a microwave drawer on the sink side, double trash pullouts on the side opposite the range, and two electrical outlets (the one on the apron side of the island has a USB port, so the couple can plug in their laptops). Turned legs offer structural support and add a decorative touch that makes the angled island look like a piece of furniture.
The brief: to create a brighter space Designer removed three walls to open the plan to the surrounding spaces and create a stronger connection to the backyard. She opened the back wall of the house to allow for new casement windows over the sink that let in light and fresh air. The angled island at the center provides better storage and more work area. The frameless maple cabinetry, with recessed-panel doors, is painted white to enhance the natural light. Glass-front upper cabinets in one corner help balance the room, and they offer display storage for collectibles and special dishes the couple found during a trip to Provence, France. An open wine rack occupies the space above a new 36-inch-wide, counter-depth refrigerator.
Kitchens tend to be very square spaces. With plenty of rectangular cabinetry and appliances, and little to no furniture, a typical kitchen may not have any curved or angled lines at all. Using hexagon tile for the floor helps break up these stiff right angles, adding a new visual twist that gives the room lots of interest. Bonus points for having your adjacent flooring material custom cut to meet the hexagons in such a fun way as shown here.
Incorporating a spot for a microwave into a kitchen design is essential these days. A microwave takes up a lot of valuable real estate, so it’s generally preferable to build it into its own compartment where it doesn’t interrupt counter space and workflow. This tall pantry is split into three sections. The top and lower sections cater to dried food storage, while the open section in the center creates the ideal space for a microwave and cookbooks. A second space-saving design feature of this pantry is its sliding doors. The pantry is in a corner right next to the main entrance door to the kitchen.
Tight corners, oddly shaped rooms, nooks and alcoves can make designing a kitchen more difficult. The trick is thinking outside the box and figuring out what each space is best used for. A recess in the wall next to this kitchen contains built-in cabinets to create a small study nook. The desktop is the perfect size for a laptop or even a full computer, while a small drawer underneath can keep unpaid bills and shopping lists off the kitchen counter. The open shelves add visual interest and can be used to display decorative items, store small boxes of paperwork or even keep cookbooks within easy reach of the kitchen.
This kitchen takes the concept of using every available inch of space to a whole new level. A bulkhead is often essential above kitchen cabinets to conceal unsightly beams, air conditioner ducting, range hood ducting or plumbing pipes from upstairs. Sometimes it can be possible to steal back some of that space and use it as additional storage. Here, open shelves have been incorporated into the bulkhead area. Not only do they create additional storage space, but they also add an interesting design feature to the kitchen. The inclusion of a library ladder isn’t essential, particularly if you have space to store a step stool or small ladder close to the area.
Corner cabinets are often difficult to reach, yet they are essential to utilizing every bit of space. Building a wire pullout into a corner cabinet makes it much more convenient to use, and it facilitates additional storage. Pullouts are available for both L-shaped corner cabinets and straight corner cabinets, also known as blind corner cabinets. The wire pullout pictured here is attached to the back of the cabinet door. The front section pulls out as the door is opened, which in turn pulls the back section forward. This makes it possible to pack as much into the cabinet as possible while ensuring that everything is still easy to access.
THIS IS MY DREAM KITCHEN !
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