The Latest Kitchen Trends in 2019

Starting big, one of the latest kitchen trends that we’ve seen here at Blakes London – particularly in Australia and South Africa – is to double up on your kitchen space. And by that, we don’t mean using it as a multi-tasking room, but literally doubling the number of kitchens in the home.

The first kitchen area becomes your ‘dirty kitchen’, in other words, it’s where all of the cooking and clearing up action happens; the second is your clean kitchen – a space for entertaining and serving food with family and friends.

Because of how the kitchen has earned itself the number one convivial spot in the home, the latest kitchen designs are finding they need to adapt in ways to make it as effortlessly liveable as possible. That shift started with making dining areas a key aspect of a kitchen, but as designers, at Blakes London we ask, but what more is achievable? Cue technology.

Kitchens aren’t purely for cooking and eating any more. Children complete homework at the island, adults work from home on the kitchen table, and sophisticated drinks and dinner parties have migrated here to be close to the action rather than in a separate dining room. There might be five pieces of technology in constant use in a kitchen, appliances in cupboards aside.

Simple but considered attention to technology details have therefore become really big in kitchen design.

Additional plug sockets are the starting point but charging drawers are also on the rise, in which there’s between 4-6 USB charging ports so that there aren’t trailing cables, phones and tablets on the work surface. Everything is safely concealed from view. If you design such a drawer with the right depth, it can accommodate multiple tablets, multiple laptops and multiple phones – it should be made to measure for each specific client’s needs.

The ‘disappearing kitchen’ trend is definitely a newcomer in kitchen design and is one of the ones that we’ve found particularly exciting.

Especially popular in properties with a smaller living space where the dining and living rooms merge with the kitchen, designing the kitchen so that it could be mistaken for a wall of cabinetry alone – like an oversized dresser or full library wall – is a way to make the space seem calmer and larger.

The countertop cabinetry runs flush with the base, with worktop space concealed behind the doors. Because we store less food in our homes, our food is fresher and items are purchased less in bulk, which means that there is more space to incorporate additional feature cabinetry that fulfils other functions.

The resulting aesthetic is one that is understated and conducive with the ambience in the living areas. It feels like one connected space.

Following on from the ‘disappearing kitchen’, the shift to bringing the living room into the kitchen is becoming ever more popular.

Even in properties that aren’t open-plan and that have a separate lounge, it’s now a trendy thing to carve out part of the kitchen space for a secondary living room; it’s not all about the kitchen table anymore. The rise of bowl food and eating in a relaxed seating area has contributed to the kitchen living room where a sofa and coffee table or a window seat and armchair area helps it to become the favourite room in the house.

By this, we don’t mean modern laminate kitchen cabinets, but wooden ones given a high-gloss paint treatment.

Eggshell paint, which has a slight sheen, is almost always used in a kitchen for reasons of practicality but high gloss or full gloss paint has always been a rarity until now.

High gloss is a finish that has become increasingly requested in kitchens as clients look for ways in inject vibrant colours in their kitchens. We recently completed a luxury kitchen and diner space for a high-profile client that was finished in a high gloss Studio green with a polished poured concrete floor. The whole space felt incredibly light and luxurious.

Steadily, we’ve witnessed clients become braver with their choice of cabinet colour. Our navy blue Shaker kitchen has been extremely popular for a long time. Now though, it’s the turn of green, which has given brass another lease of life. In general though, colours are going lighter and into the muted pastel shades. We are frequently seeing clients requesting soft sea green and tranquil blue hues in their kitchen. We’re now at this mid-way point with palettes where people want colour but to temper it.

Whether you choose to subscribe to any of 2019’s kitchen trends, there are plenty of updates that you can make to new or existing kitchen designs. Here, Jamie Blake shares eight of his go-tos for creating a dream kitchen: