At a seaside New Zealand house, the simple kitchen has strandboard cabinetry and an MDF island that conceals a fireplace at one end. The bright green cabinetry of the island are a happy pop of color that references the native greenery outside.

Embracing the natural environs of their family home—a 1970 Deck House nestled among 175-foot-tall tulip poplar trees—residents Darren Selement and Cathryn Rich updated the kitchen with a rich material palette of wood and stone. Cherner barstools are paired with custom, cherry-stained alder cabinets by Holiday Kitchens, Barocca soapstone countertops, and flooring from Globus Cork.

Just because your kitchen is on the smaller side doesn’t mean you can’t make it as efficient and effective as possible.

A high-gloss finish can be achieved by having a local automotive shop repaint the cabinet fronts. The finish will be long-lasting, strong, and shiny.

Sometimes, it's the details—like new door knobs and hinges—that matter. Small T-shaped brushed nickel pulls are a modern choice in this kitchen with light wood cabinets and invisible hinges.

Davor and August check out the yard from the living room. “The bifold Vistalite doors allow us to open the house up completely and enjoy the fresh, warm air,” Davor says.

The front door dissolves into the facade.

For the kitchen, Tyler hired David Restorick, a furniture maker and friend, to build an island for storage and to wrap Ikea cabinets with oak for a customized look. He also built a staircase that doubles as display space for Tyler’s vast collection of colorful cookware by the likes of Finel, Copco, Cathrineholm, Jens Quistgaard, and Stig Lindberg.

Gray-purple iron railings, a fuchsia and green wooden entry, and garage doors provide contrast to the white walls of this Santa Barbara home. Photo by Steven Holmes.

Overhead cabinets now can be easily swung open for ease of access. The kitchens are priced at IKEA’s usual retails. A 10 by 10 foot kitchen fitted with Sektion cabinets will range from around $1,300 to $2,200, excluding appliances.

The built-in cabinets at the entry include special storage for Ryan and Rory's running shoes. (They're both long-distance runners.)

For this kitchen, the architects paired slate-gray HPL (high-pressure laminate) cabinets by Henrybuilt, cool Basaltina countertops, with custom shelving and a white Corian backsplash.

The ultimate luxury: a hot bath in the clawfoot tub, with the fiberglass door open wide to the woods.

In the kitchen, the couple found barely used appliances instead of new ones to save money. The cabinetry and butcher block counters are from Ikea.

The new volume houses the dining area, which includes stairs to the bedrooms. The table is from Blake Avenue and the walnut chairs are from Room & Board. “You don’t want bright colors to take away from that relationship between the interior and the exterior,” Walker says.

Pros: Laminate is at the low end of the price range for countertops, is scratch- and stain-resistant, and comes in a tremendous range of colors. It’s also easy to install, making it a viable DIY option for the handy crowd. Cons: Because laminate countertops are created by layering pieces of plywood and plastic, edges can chip off easily, and the surface can even melt if too much heat is applied directly.

Guess used inexpensive graded pine plywood so that he would get heavy grain patterns on the surfaces. One of the main goals in the kitchen was simplicity. To that end, he opted for a poured-in-place concrete island. "We didn’t know if we could afford to do that, but we found a great subcontractor [Nate Francis of Countertop Creations] here who had never really built anything like that," Guess says. "Because he was interested in giving it a shot and adding it to his portfolio, he didn’t charge an exorbitant amount of money because it was sort of an experiment for him as well." The kitchen features a GE Profile refrigerator and KitchenAid range, microwave, and dishwasher. The sink and faucet are from Kohler. The project's builder was Joe Doherty with Custom Homecrafters of Austin.

“The walnut unit between the kitchen and dining room ties into the fumed oak floor,” Dubbeldam says. “The rest of the materials in the house—glass, marble, stone—were selected to offset the wood.”

In the sleek kitchen, the white Ikea cabinet uppers seem to disappear into the wall, while the bases get a distinctive custom walnut wrapping. Flanking the cabinets are open bookshelves, which provide secondary function as a spacial divider for the children’s play area. A Dornbracht faucet sits on a slab of Vermont Olympian White Danby marble, which is also used for the island and backsplash.

In such a small space “you have to organize, and every piece takes a decision,” says resident Heidi Wright. The couple keep things they use less frequently, like guest bedding, in the higher cabinets.

Visiting a Manhattan apartment designed by Tim Seggerman is like sitting inside one of Nakashima’s cabinets, a metaphor realized most fully in an ingenious "library"—really a glorified cubby with a banded maple ceiling, conjured from a free space adjacent to the loft bed.

The subway tile-lined bathroom was kept as simple as possible, with Hansgrohe fixtures and cabinets made of vertical-grain Douglas fir above a top-mounted Duravit sink. Since installing a window was unfeasible given the bathroom's proximity to other properties, Storey added a skylight over the shower.

Christine (at left), and Amanda (at right) chat with David’s sister Aroha Yates-Smith (center) in the kitchen.

A beloved Japanese tradition is to char exterior cladding to make it fire resistant. Here, the effect on the front door is likely more aesthetic than preventative—though you can never be too careful.

More traditional cabinet cup pulls from Ikea can still have a modern sensibility when paired with other sleek finishes.

Reilly slotted a utility room behind the kitchen to house the oven, an extra fridge, pantry cabinets, and the laundry. A Navajo rug that Reilly found at a local yard sale adds a touch of color. The countertop and backsplash are stainless steel. She found the counter stools at a local thrift shop. “I scour every secondhand shop and go to ever yard sale in the Hamptons,” she says. “Each piece is the result of weeks of searching.”

At a home about half an hour from Lake Tahoe, architect Jack Hawkins and interior designer Cheryl Chenault built a house that would support their clients’ unique requirements in a home that would be 8,000 to 10,000 square feet. In the kitchen, two islands, one in the shape of an L and the other a smaller rectangular island, are layered table over one portion create generous space to spread out. Norman Cherner barstools from Design Within Reach line the island in the kitchen, which is crowned by an open loft office. The faucets are from Dornbracht; the countertops are Caesarstone. Hawkins integrated a steel-clad casual eating nook, at left.

The sliding doors to a deck are by the Canadian company Dynamic Architectural Windows & Doors.

Custom millwork maximizes storage throughout the home. There is even a special location for the cat.

A USM credenza holds vinyl and booze. Music flows via a Pro-Ject Debut III turntable, a pair of Elipson Planet L speakers, and a Music Hall Audio amplifier. - Brooklyn, New York Dwell Magazine : July / August 2017

A consistent wood palette makes the interior feel cohesive.

"The unassuming ink-toned cabinetry is lined with an unexpected burst of brilliant salmon pink; a punchy gesture that balances the strength of Tom’s artworks without overshadowing them," says Lynch.

The residents love to entertain and cook, so 590BC worked to create a kitchen that was functional and aesthetically pleasing. "It is complex and considered down to the most minute detail, but still reads as simple and clean," Breitner says. Photo by Frank Oudeman.

Designer Norman Cherner created this classic molded plywood barstool in the 1950s. From $699