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An expert tells you how to build on trends in your kitchen and bath
As the main hub in many homes, owners are looking for bigger kitchens with more counter space and out-of-the-way appliances.
MCT photo
A trend for two separate laundry rooms — one in the master bedroom and the other in the guest wing — is picking up in popularity.
MCT photo
Kitchen and bathrooms are the most important rooms in the house when it comes to remodeling, selling and buying. Interest in them is so rabid they command their own trade shows and gobble up a huge portion of HGTV’s and DIY’s online Web sites. According to the Association of National Homebuilders, improvements in these extensively plumbed rooms also carry one of the largest rates of return when houses are sold; 78 percent of the remodeling costs are usually refunded, so builders, potential buyers and soon-to-be-sellers carefully watch the trends in kitchen and bath design.
Here to share her insight on such matters is Elizabeth Falconer, owner of Position by Design in Fort Worth, Texas, who has been in the building business for almost three decades. She has completed hundreds of custom homes and more than 1,000 model homes and interior-design projects in 42 states. She regularly talks at home-building trade shows on kitchen and bath trends. These are her observations on trends that are waxing and waning.
Kitchens
“Your home design dictates how you socialize,” Falconer says and, in many cases, the kitchen has become the hub of the house, as well as a performance stage. She attributes this to famous chefs taking over the kitchen and making it as much a male preserve as a female one.
It was the men who ushered in the desire for high-performance industrial-grade appliances, though, “quite frankly,” she says, this market has peaked because the huge appliances visually overpower the space.
“It’s more practical to put in two residential-grade stove/oven combinations. They give you the double cook tops, which are the benefit of an industrial-size cooking surface, plus the two ovens, and they actually cost less,” she says.
• More appliances: Many kitchens are kitted out with two ovens, two work islands, two dishwashers or dishwasher drawers and two refrigerators. “Upscale homes will have additional features, including wine storage and built-in appliances like coffee makers,” she says. Falconer also has seen double laundry rooms, “one for the master bedroom and one for the guest wing.” Wondering where you’d put another side-by-side washer and dryer? No worries, Falconer says, “I expect to see European-style washer/dryer combos in the near future, and they take even less space.”
“There is also a demand for morning kitchens in master bedrooms,” she says, so the homeowners don’t have to pad downstairs to get their coffee.
• More kitchens: Some high-end homes boast double, triple or quadruple kitchens. Falconer is familiar with a home in a Fort Worth neighborhood that has “a regular kitchen, a catering kitchen, a wine grotto with a sink, refrigerator and microwave, as well as a kitchen in the media room and an outdoor kitchen.”
She says she believes that the interest in outdoor kitchens will continue because “as the price under the roof goes up (or stays up), the integration of the indoor-outdoor spaces will take on an increasingly important role because they offer more ‘living space’ with a lower price per foot.”
• Clever storage: As the kitchen space opens up, there is less wall space for upper cabinets, “so we will see an increased pantry size and use of smart storage,” Falconer says. She points to a drawer under the bottom shelf in the kick-plate area, flush with the floor. “This is something you’d find on a boat where every square inch has to be useful.” She pulls out photos of tall, narrow cabinets next to the stove that hold row upon row of single spice jars, each one easily found and neatly arranged.
• The cyber cafe: One thing Falconer tried to anticipate in building her own kitchen was the need for additional electrical outlets. She doubled the number called for by code. Along her long bar, she placed outlets every 18 inches or so. But it is still not enough. Whenever her adult children come home, they plug in their laptops and cell-phone chargers, and her kitchen “looks like a cyber cafe,” Falconer says.
• The end of the triangle: For decades, kitchen designers have been lauding the kitchen’s “work triangle,” which is the configuration between the stove, refrigerator and sink. Falconer says the “work triangle is a dinosaur. The triangle needs to be a trapezoid to include the most utilized appliance — the microwave.” Incorporating this appliance necessitates rethinking relationships of use.
“The refrigerator should be on the outside edge of the space near the seating area,” she says, because it gets a lot of kid traffic, and this keeps the noncooks from crossing paths with hot food coming from the ovens.
• Is there any other surface?: “Granite is still the material of choice for countertops. But be careful,” Falconer warns, “some materials that are being sold as granite are too soft to technically qualify and are giving granite a bad rap. If you cannot afford slab granite, an alternative is granite tile. Installed with epoxy grout, you get the same basic performance at a fraction of the cost.”
Bathrooms
“After the absurd growth in the ’90s, the master-bath size has stabilized in a more realistic scale with the homes of the 21st century. Of course, that is relative, but I am seeing even the huge homes cutting out the vast wasted spaces that we built in the last decade. The closets are still huge, but the bathrooms are more human scale,” Falconer says.
• Separation of his/her space: The master bathroom is dividing in two, with more demand for not just for two sinks but for two separate vanities, along with his-and-her dressing rooms. “In the very high-end (homes), there are his-and-her master baths,” Falconer says, “and that usually trickles down to lower-end and production homes in some form.”
• The T.C.: What used to be known as the water closet is becoming the toilet closet. “Toilets will be increasingly compartmentalized,” meaning they will have their own room, but Falconer says this is more common in Texas than in the rest of the country. Along with the separation of master baths, don’t be surprised to find his and her toilets as a design feature of dual master baths.
• Hardware: One of the most economical redos for either the kitchen or bath is to replace outdated hardware with new fixtures. The most popular hardware finishes are rubbed bronze, oil-rubbed bronze and brushed stainless. None of these is highly reflective, and oil-rubbed bronze has a dark brown, almost black matte finish. New finishes are constantly flooding the market, so there are dozens of choices. But not all fixture manufacturers follow suit, Falconer says, so the knobs and handles you find may not have towel bars, or light fixtures, to match.
Here, Falconer issues a word of caution. “The price in fixtures is not related to performance or the finish warranty. There almost seems to be an inverse relationship between price and performance in the plumbing arena. Some of the lower-end fixtures have better warranties than some fixtures at three times the price.”
• Water towers: Showers with multiple heads that pulsate, rain or beat you into submission are the newest bath luxury. Too bad they come at a time when water conservation is a serious consideration. “No problem,” Falconer says, “the plumbers fit them with low-flow heads.”
• Cabinetry: No buyer has ever asked for less storage, and the bathroom is one place people seem to want more. Builders are accommodating with floor-to-ceiling cabinetry and more drawers than doors.
Vanities run the full length of a wall, with a break for a sitting space and a shallow portion so that women can get closer to the mirror for makeup application.
• One constant: The woman’s side of the bathroom or the woman’s master bath will always be nicer and her closet always will be larger, because, Falconer says, “You guys may outearn us, but when it comes to the home-buying decision — that belongs to us.”