With Kitchens, is Anything Simply Black or White? It's all in the eye of the beholder and designer
We like to think of ourselves, modestly, as kitchen aficionados ever since we wrote two kitchen tomes, first The Kitchen Bible, followed by Kitchen Conversations (both from Images Publishing).
The kitchen (and we know you’ve heard this ad nauseam) is the heart of our homes. In recent years, that heart has been beating even stronger. After the pandemic, for most homeowners and apartment dwellers, it became the go-to place for families and pods to gather to cook, eat, socialize, do homework, pay bills, drink wine and hang out. This continues unabated.
When kitchen trends come across our desk or more accurately in our emails, we are all eyes and ears. Such was the case with a post from CopperSmith®, a leader in highly customized architectural metalwork, which cites a new trend: After analyzing millions of Google searches, it found that Americans are moving away from safe, neutral kitchen designs in favor of darker colors, richer materials and interiors that reflect their personality.
But there can be a darker side: darker kitchens. Will the next buyer of your home buy into a black versus a white or lighter kitchen? Interestingly, more homeowners are making choices based on their preferences rather than worrying about what the next buyer might want. It’s part of the live-in-the-moment mindset: our homes are OUR castles, not someone else’s, and we shouldn’t automatically worry about resale. It’s also recognition that we can never know what the next buyer will desire; you do white, they want black or maybe even red.
After reading countless other surveys and articles re: the trend toward darker colors, we’re not sure that they’re really taking over. In the past, white kitchens were the preferred choice, a safe choice with a timeless, clean look. However, for the first time, black kitchens are trumping white ones in online searches, generating 803,000 monthly Google searches versus 684,000 for white kitchens.
According to Ryan Grambart, founder and CEO of CopperSmith®, “Black cabinetry works exceptionally well alongside copper, brass, natural timber and stone. These materials introduce warmth and texture while allowing homeowners to create kitchens that feel timeless instead of following short-lived trends.”
The report also states that if black is too much of a visual stretch, a retro avocado green might be for you—yes, that color of long-ago 1950s kitchens. It’s experienced the largest increase in demand, with searches rising by an extraordinary 4,028% year-on-year!
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