kitchen design

Danny Seo replaced the wood cabinets of his kitchen with stainless-steel models. As a professional photo stylist, he needed to accommodate a vast collection of kitchen items, such as multiples of plates, wooden bowls, and utensils.

Smitten from the start with a 1970s concrete villa in rural Belgium, a resident and her designer embark on a sensitive renovation that excises the bad (carpeted walls, dark rooms) and highlights the good (idyllic setting, statement architecture). Owner Nathalie Vandemoortele worked with designer Renaud de Poorter on the interior renovations, which included opening up the heavy structure with the help of new windows and doors to the outside. A concrete bi-level island keeps the Brutalist vibe on the interior, but is open and light enough to feel balanced.

Alexia, Achilleas, and friend Fotini prepare lunch in the kitchen, outfitted with cabinets by Zeyko.

A tight construction budget informed the choices Sean Guess made as he designed a house for a couple in Austin, Texas. Budget-minded materials, like the James Hardie fiber-cement siding, helped hold construction costs to $130 per square foot. Sherwin-Williams’s Cyberspace hue colors the exterior and Parakeet coats the custom kitchen cabinets by Austin Wood Works. The planter is made from Cor-Ten steel.

Black and white kitchen tiles add visual interest to this stunning modern kitchen by IKEA.

The kitchen features oyster gray Laminex countertops, an Astra Walker brass-plated sink, and a Miele oven.

A view of the kitchen.

Make sure your kitchen fits seamlessly with the rest of your home. A good entertaining space should have a look that's consistent with the overall design, so use finishings, colors, and other elements that compliment the rest of the space.

The careful coordination of color continues in the kitchen, where the gray and white marble backsplash, lit with faint orange lights, mediates between the ashen column and ochre cabinets.

"Hospitality is about trying to support multiple functions in one space," McKelvey says. "In the old hotel model—the bar is separated from the lobby which is separated from the business center. We’re trying to make all of those spaces overlap and impact and affect each other."

With a custom design by Scalo, the kitchen is “white and simple; we didn’t want handles,” notes De Graaf. The hotplate, oven, and teppan-yaki grill are from Falliss.

The kitchen offers clear sight lines to the rest of the living space and, through the windows, out into the countryside. Its crisp white and grey cabinetry is topped with white Corian countertops.

Engineered for versatility, Bosch appliances fit into the contemporary kitchen with ease. From wall ovens and warming drawers, to speed microwave and steam convection ovens, their streamlined designs create stunning visual alignment between cabinetry and appliance.

The renovation of a 2,000-square-foot property updates a century-old design for a family of four. "We placed the kitchen at the center of the house to link with the dining room and the outdoor space," Moreau says. In the kitchen, a Wolf oven brings out the silver details in Coit’s Bianco Cararra backsplash and island. Hee bar stools by Hay are lined under the island.

In this sleek kitchen renovation in San Francisco, the kitchen backsplash is an easy-to-clean glass backsplash that mimics the glossy finish of the surrounding white cabinets. Painters accomplished the high-gloss finish on the cabinets of a kitchen in San Francisco by applying a coat of paint, polishing it with very high-grit sandpaper, repeating the process for each layer, then topping it with three coats of clear varnish. "It’s like an auto body," says builder Jeff King. "It’s incredibly beautiful." The island provides shelving space and storage as well as a second sink, an is topped with pietra grigio marble.

Built-in kitchen cabinets and a monolithic island help keep the space uncluttered. The wall ovens are from Gaggenau.