Color Trends

Are you thinking about remodeling your bathroom?

Have you torn out a collection of magazine pages showing beautiful baths clad in white marble and white fixtures?

While white fixtures will remain timeless, the color choices for your walls are shifting towards darker grays. (Gray = American while Grey = UK)

I prefer warm grays over cool grays. Although sometimes a cooler gray will look great with Carrara Marble.

Gray works in many different styles of homes. It’s perfect for a rustic modern or loft-style home, a traditional home with a modern feel or a contemporary home.

You might also enjoy: Benjamin Moore Color of the Year 2015

If decorating around a theme, gray is perfect for creating a Zen bathroom.

Consider if giving your bath a new look with a simple coat of gray paint. Light or dark, it will be anything but boring. Adding accents of color with towels, flowers and soaps is an inexpensive way to quickly keep a room looking fresh.

January 16, 2013

New Design Trend: Oak

Some of my great Blogging Friends are over in Germany attending the International Furniture Fair at IMM Cologne this week. (Jealous) One of the trends coming from the show is “naturalness.”

Light oaks in particular, as well as oak variants with an attractive grain in natural wood tones on clean door styles will be one of the strongest trends coming from the show. It doesn’t matter if the door is an actual wood veneer or a plastic door that mimics wood’s appearance.

Expect to see this look paired with white and matte stainless – except on the walls, they will be gray. More daring individuals may be inspired by the show to pair the wood with bright colors such as cobalt blue or saffron yellow.

Gnarled Oak Kitchen by Leicht

Brushed grains, staggered joints, cracks and knots also enhance the appeal of this trend. Some manufacturers are even applying oak shingles to cabinet fronts for visual interest.

January 10, 2013

The Home Entertainer’s Ultimate Refrigerator – Really?

At the 2013 CES show Samsung decided to throw their hat in the ring with other manufacturers who have shown Refrigerators with touchscreens.

The 32 cu. ft. capacity Samsung T9000 LCD Four-Door Refrigerator represents the next evolution in refrigerator design, with a new form factor that delivers the most fresh food storage in its class according to Samsung.

The top compartment is a refrigerator with 19.4 cu. ft. capacity French Door compartment. The bottom left is a 6.1 cu. ft. freezer. The bottom right side can be either refrigerator or freezer depending on your personal needs.

The refrigerator also comes with apps to help families stay connected and organized. Whether you’d want your Calendar and Weather apps on your kitchen appliance is up to you. Samsung seems proud to offer Evernote integration. While I love the app, I can’t help but imagine all the smudges you’d have on the screen.

No pricing is available yet for the refrigerator but the touchscreen-less model out in the spring will be around $3,999.

$Samsung t9000 \ KitchAnn Style$

January 2, 2013

Retro Appliances

We’ve seen companies offering retro looking ranges and refrigerators but have you every seen a retro microwave? The only option for homeowners was to hide a small microwave inside a cabinet when they desired a Period Kitchen.

An Italian appliance manufacturer has nicely solved this problem with their compact line of appliances. Restart offers microwaves, built-in coffee makers, pizza oven and steam oven in their compact collection: Compact Series di Restart.

I really like the all burnished brass finish shown on the microwave/oven combination unit. The mechanical parts of the EFM451 are from Miele. Features include TouchControl in 20 languages, 15 cooking combination methods, and 100 recipe presets.

The EMC451 built-in automatic coffee machine with grinder and cappuccino maker is equally stunning to look at and undoubtedly easy to use with Miele technology.

The Navitronic, multilingual display makes brewing two coffees simultaneously a breeze. There is also the ability to customize 10 different user profiles and choose between bean or powder for brewing.

Restart’s showroom is on Florence so unless you are traveling abroad, these units will be hard to see in person. I haven’t seen a detail spec sheet so I can’t tell if they can easily be converted to American voltage – but, one can hope.