Flos Lighting

KitchAnn Style | Flos Lighting

A great kitchen design needs quality lighting. No matter how stylish your home looks, you won’t want to use your new kitchen if it is dark – especially at night.

I first wrote about Flos Lighting in 2007 (have I really been blogging that long?) in a post featuring the Arco Floor lamp positioned over a kitchen island. I think I like the idea a whole lot more now than I did then. The light comes in both incandescent and LED options.

Kitchan Style | Flos Arco

If you prefer pendant lights for lighting your kitchen island, the Fucsia pendant is a great choice. It is not only stunning to look at, it will light your work surface beautifully.

KitchAnn Style | Flos Fucsia pendant

These lights have a blown glass diffuser with a sandblasted edge and a silicone ring at the bottom to prevent movement.  They come in single purchase size or in groupings of 3, 8 or 12.

KitchAnn Style | Lighting

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.

xylo by Leicht via KitchAnn Style

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.

The Home Entertainer’s Ultimate Refrigerator – Really?

samsung t9000 | KitchAnn styleAt 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

Pantone 2013 Color of the Year: Emerald

Emerald Green | KitchAnn StylePantone recently name  color 17-5641: Emerald Green as its 2013 color of the Year.

The Color of the Year for 2013 is a very clear departure from 2012’s Color of the Year: “Tangerine Tango,” a hot color that Pantone’s Eiseman described as “sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive…an orange with a lot of depth to it.” In 2011, “Honeysuckle Pink” was the top hue, a retro hue that some characterized as “Mad Men Pink.”

But 2013 is all about a vivid, verdant shade of green that “enhances our sense of well-being further by inspiring insight, as well as promoting balance and harmony.”

To the casual observer the Color of the Year designation can seem arbitrary — in recent years, it’s bounced from shades of blue to yellow to green to pink to orange — those who study color say it’s hardly random.

“When we’re traveling around the world, we look at little clues to how we think color is progressing,” said Eiseman. said.

But like so many good things, the emerald trend seemed to start at home. “We started to see it in housewares,” Eiseman said.

Cuisinart and Le Creuset have been introducing emerald into their lines, and in Europe, the color has been showing up in glassware and ceramics.

“It has a natural affinity to work beautifully with anything with that glow,” says Eiseman.

Emerald Green | KitchAnn Style

Emerald Green | KitchAnn Style

Emerald Green | KitchAnn Style

Emerald Green | KitchAnn Style

Emerald Green | KitchAnn Style

The fashion world seems to have embraced the color, especially with celebrities Angelina Jolie, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Elizabeth Moss looking fabulous in jewel-colored gowns. The reaction from Interior Designers seems to be mixed.

Are you on board or will your color choices tend to shift a different direction?