Kitchen Trends 2018 – Our View of Houzz Survey
According to the 2018 Houzz Kitchen Trends Survey, more than a quarter of kitchen upgrades are driven by a recent home purchase. No surprise that kitchens are a major factor in our choice of home and the first thing we look to upgrade if the kitchen falls short of expectations! But we have delved a little deeper into this survey and looked at buying trends amongst our developer clients, plus upgrade choices by purchasers, to translate how international kitchen trends impact on the contract kitchen market.
What we found most interesting about the Houzz survey, is that when you analyse customer choices, we all want the same things out of our kitchen. Storage and style are the key drivers that determine which kitchens we choose and how we personalise them.
Our developer clients need to not only offer kitchens with broad appeal, but they need to exceed customer expectations with regards to style and functionality. Our job is to stay one step ahead of trends, anticipate future needs and continue to ensure that our kitchens tick all the right boxes with purchasers.
The Houzz survey found that style and storage matter above all, with ease of working, playing, living and entertaining not far behind. Aside from function, style and beauty are considered the most important aspects of a well-designed kitchen.
Worktops are a key feature and also the item that homeowners chose to spend on the most. Corian is, for the first time in 3 years, the most popular worktop material (43%), knocking granite off the top spot (34%) and far surpassing butcher block or wood slab (13%).
Project Kitchens Designer Lizzie Plank-Watson comments,
“White is becoming increasingly popular for worktops, cabinets and backsplash tiles and is also the second most popular colour for walls, behind grey.
“Corian is by far the most widely used worktop material amongst our customers and Glacier White is the most popular colour. We offer our developer clients and their architects and designers a wide range of options to suit the look and feel of the property and development as a whole, but white is most definitely on trend! It is a colour that doesn’t date easily, which is perhaps why it is so popular.”
The main functional additions that purchasers enquire about through Project Kitchens are often those that we have included in the show apartment. These are designed to make life in a new kitchen just that little bit easier and include for example: Multimatic Provisions sets, herbs and spices holders, foil roll holders, paper towel holders, trays and rails.
The options to personalise a new SieMatic kitchen are endless, so even when we have worked up a perfect kitchen design with a developer, there is still plenty of free reign for purchasers to add their own stamp. MultiMatic for example allows up to 30% more storage in a SieMatic kitchen and we train our clients’ sales teams on functionality and design, to make sure that purchasers end up with a kitchen that suits their exact needs.
Lizzie adds,
“Trends are fascinating and definitely have a place in the contract kitchen market, but that said, SieMatic kitchens are designed to be timeless and we want to create kitchens that last a lifetime. Trends come and go, but we have over 20 years experience in designing contract kitchens and many of our first kitchens are still very much in use today.”