2022’s Hottest Kitchen Trends

Updating a kitchen design is a great way to elevate your daily life. Our kitchens are one of the rooms we spend the most time in. Whether you're a gourmet chef or a remote worker who frequently uses the kitchen during the day, the kitchen is an essential element of our homes and everyday lives. It can be easy to let your kitchen design become dull or outdated, but it can make all the difference when you give it some extra attention and re-decorate or remodel.

The Vibe is Organic Modernism

Gone are the days when it was super common to have a dining room where you would only have dinner or formal meals. These days, we're all about creating multi-purpose and functional kitchen designs that allow our spaces to be used for many different activities. The past years have caused many of us to focus more on how our areas impact our lives and mental health. Designing with intention has become more important as we spend more and more time in our homes. This means thinking more about how things like clutter impact our mental space and how your environment looks reflect what's going on inside your head.

Emerging from these ideas is a design concept called organic modernism. This concept is simple, clean, and uncluttered; it combines natural elements like textured fabrics such as cotton, linen, canvas, wool, and other natural fibers like wood, bamboo, and seagrass. When we bring the outdoors into our kitchen design and combine that with streamlined elements, it gives us a feeling of serenity while also staying grounded and connected with nature.

Colors

Over the past few seasons, we've seen a heavy inclination towards neutrals, shades of white, and overall monochromatic kitchen design. You'll see 2022 kitchen designs bringing in much more color. Think rich, saturated, vibrant colors. You will see bold indigos, rich dark greens, and luxurious burgundy to magenta pinks featured throughout this season.

A design element that you can expect to see carryover from 2021 is gold finishes in your kitchen. Gold finishes aren't going anywhere, from brushed brass cabinet hardware to sink fixtures to grace notes like matching napkin rings.

You’re not alone if you’re not feeling the 2022 trend of rich, bold colors on expensive items! Many homeowners don’t want to commit to a statement color that might require redecorating in a couple of years. However, there are still ways to work this trend into your kitchen design design by keeping those more neutral colors in some significant features like your countertops, cabinets, and flooring. Use your neutral elements as a canvas and bring those trendier colors in smaller decor pieces that are more easily switched out. Instead of committing to rich forest green cabinetry, think about replacing some of your window coverings with that beautiful color, adding accent elements on your countertops like old books with dark green covers, bowls, and other design pieces — bring that bold color through to the mid-level of your room. Don’t forget about your flooring to keep those pops of color consistent throughout the room. Keeping that dark green moving throughout your kitchen can be achieved by adding a couple of rugs to your kitchen floor in that same colorway.

Cabinets & Countertops

You'll see tile work featured more in the 2022 kitchen design season than you may have seen in past years. No longer just an easy-to-clean backsplash, glazed tilework will feature heavily in a decorative way this year.

Colorful cabinetry and color contrast cabinets and mesh is something else you'll see a lot in the 2022 kitchen design. Think black cabinet fronts with neutral-colored mesh or wicker inserts. Something like this goes back to the idea we discussed earlier, keeping things clean and simple and bringing in natural elements.

Don't be surprised when you see kitchen designs that feature multiple islands. This idea goes back to the concept of creating multi-purpose functional spaces. Instead of one large island in the middle of the room, you might look at putting in one smaller island that's more useful for someone cooking in the kitchen for chopping, or using the oven, that kind of thing. Add another island that you could use more as a coffee station, a bar, or seating. This idea is meant to create an intentional space with multiple uses instead of one larger but more generic area that may work a little bit for everybody in your home. Still, it isn’t as specialized as a different kind of design might be with multiple islands.

This year, built-in pantries and coffee stations are gangbusters in the kitchen design world. Setting aside space for a built-in coffee bar or pantry can be a great way to customize your area for those of you remodeling your kitchen or doing a new build. Make sure you have a place for everything in your kitchen that can be put away to reduce visual clutter.

Let's talk about countertops! There are many great options for counters these days that are higher quality than the standard particleboard with melamine but less expensive than solid marble. Engineered stone countertops are a great option to enhance durability while keeping costs lower than solid granite or marble. Instead of being made from one complete piece of stone, this countertop is made from a composite of smaller pieces bonded together and can be made in any size or shape that works for your space. Most are available in multiple colors, patterns, and styles.

Flooring

This year's kitchen design trends will see more colorful and patterned flooring similar to cabinet colors. Expect to see tile work with beautiful patterns and more neutral flooring that includes a texture or a pattern, bringing more visual interest to your floor space and incorporating as much color or vibrancy as your style allows.

Tile and wood together is another fun way to bring interest to your flooring. Instead of just a hard line cutting off your hardwood floor and beginning tile, you'll see designers and builders creating a more exciting design in the flooring of kitchens that uses tile and hardwood floor meshed together. This type of transition is more engaging than that hard line.

Lighting

In 2022, we're talking layered lighting solutions for your kitchen design. This is likely something you've thought about already if you're doing a kitchen remodel, but you can also achieve it by adding smaller elements to your existing kitchen design. What we mean by layered lighting is instead of flipping one switch and having a single overhead light or track lights be your only source of light in your kitchen, we include multiple different light sources. Think under cabinet lights and strip lighting on the top of your cabinets, in addition to overhead light fixtures and smaller light sources like lamps.

For those of you putting in new kitchen cabinets, consider in-cabinet lighting. While this is definitely more expensive, it's a great addition to your kitchen if your budget allows it. If you're not replacing your cabinets, there are many great options available — from peel and stick LED lights with low profiles that can add a significant layer of ambiance to your kitchen to lighting kits that you can add to your existing kitchen cabinets. If you have some power tools and a little bit of DIY determination, you can install these yourself or hire a handyperson to do it for you.

Decorating

Gone are the days when your only options for a kitchen design or remodel were tile, vinyl, or hardwood floor and particleboard or wood cabinets, etc. Kitchen design for 2022 embraces eclectic materials for both sustainability and visual appeal purposes. For example, you may decide to do your hardwood floor out of salvaged or reclaimed hardwood, but you can't get enough of one color, width, or type of wood to do your entire floor. That's OK! Kitchen design trends this year will encourage you to mix and match your reclaimed wood floor, likewise for tile and fabric.

Adding natural elements to your kitchen design is essential to keep it feeling warm and inviting, including natural fibers like linen, cotton, and burlap — the perfect way to bring some of that textural feel of the outdoors inside. Of course, never forget plants!

Speaking of warm and inviting kitchens, banquette seating is making a comeback, finally. This seating style is commonly seen in restaurant booths and was once also popular for kitchen design. Expect to see lots of banquette seating on the 2022 kitchen design roster, and consider including the style of seating in your kitchen if you have a space that works.

Last but never least, make sure to add some vintage or repurposed items. This trend will continue to be back in 2022 as designers, and DIY kitchen remodelers alike continue to be more resourceful with how they see and create design elements. Before you do a complete overhaul of your kitchen, consider what you could re-purpose or what vintage items you might be able to find in your area that you can incorporate into your kitchen design.

Kitchens are always a design trend hot topic, avoid making design mistakes by following this short guide of the latest trends of 2022 for your kitchen design inspiration!