This Year's Kitchen Trends

Six things I'm seeing in Phoenix kitchens right now. What's behind each one, and which ones are actually worth your square footage.

By Kelly  |  Kelly's Corner, your insider's look at the kitchen & bath industry

Welcome back to Kelly's Corner. Last month we talked about the work triangle, the bones of a kitchen. This month I want to talk about what's going on those bones, because I've walked enough Valley homes lately to notice the same six ideas coming up over and over.

A trend list is only useful if you know why something is trending, though. Anyone can hand you six pretty pictures. What I find interesting about this six is that not one of them is really about looks. Every one started as a solution to an annoyance, not enough oven, not enough counter, not enough light, not enough ventilation, not enough room to make a mess. They just happen to be gorgeous while solving it. That's why they have staying power. Let's get into it.

6 Trends Worth Knowing

1. Double ovens

This one surprises people when I put it at the top of the list, but the requests have been steady, and they spike every fall as folks start thinking about the holidays. The logic is simple: one oven means one temperature. The moment you're roasting a bird at 325° and someone hands you a casserole that wants 400°, you're negotiating. A second cavity ends the negotiation.

There's more than one way to get there, and the right one depends on your wall space and how your cabinetry is laid out.

One practical note: double ovens generally want a dedicated electrical circuit, and the cabinet has to be built for the appliance from the start. This isn't something you retrofit gracefully. So we plan the oven cabinet at the design stage and our own team handles the electrical as part of the project, one schedule, one point of contact, rather than you calling three companies.

2. Oversized islands

If there's a defining feature of the Phoenix kitchen, it's the island, and they keep growing. Seven feet, nine feet, ten. Part of that is our housing stock, since so many Valley homes open the kitchen right into the great room and the island becomes the border between the two. But the real reason is that the island stopped being a work surface and became the place everyone actually is. Watch any gathering: nobody sits in the living room, they stand at the island. That's what drives the size. It isn't prep space you're adding, it's room for people.

The trap is that big islands look effortless in photos and are unforgiving in real rooms. A few numbers I hold onto:

• Leave roughly 42 to 48 inches of clear walkway on every side, lean toward 48 if two people cook at once.
• Allow about 24 inches of width per stool, and around 15 inches of knee depth on the overhang.
• Most oversized islands land near 40 to 48 inches deep. Past that and you can't reach the middle to wipe it down.
• Decide early whether a prep sink or the cooktop lives in the island. It changes everything downstream.
• Put drawers on both sides. The seating side is prime storage that most plans waste.

Material matters more here than anywhere else in the kitchen, because it's the surface everyone leans on and looks at. This is where the countertop conversation gets fun. Quartz is the workhorse, with the widest range of colors and patterns. Granite and quartzite bring movement you can't manufacture, and, in our relentless Arizona light, they typically hold up to sustained direct sun better than quartz, whose resins can be affected by long UV exposure through a west-facing wall of windows. If your island sits in a stripe of afternoon sun, raise it with your designer so you're choosing on purpose.

One note on slabs: a genuinely oversized island may exceed a single slab, meaning either a seam or a hunt for oversized material. Neither is a problem, and a seam matched across the veining is close to invisible in good hands, but have that conversation before you fall in love, not after. For standard counter runs our prefabricated countertops are the fastest and most competitive option we offer; a statement island is usually where a full slab wants to go.

3. Layered lighting

Here's the trend that takes up the least square footage and changes the most. And it's the one homeowners skip.

Most kitchens I walk into have one lighting layer: cans in the ceiling, all on one switch. Fine at noon. Terrible at 7pm, and terrible when you're standing at the counter casting a shadow onto the exact cutting board you're trying to see. Layered lighting means three types of light doing three different jobs.

If you do one thing from this whole column, do under-cabinet lighting. You go from chopping in your own shadow to actually seeing your food. Then pendants over the island, hung roughly 30 to 36 inches above the countertop so they light the surface without blocking the face of the person across from you.

4. Custom hoods

The hood has quietly become the piece everyone photographs. Plaster hoods, wood hoods matched to the cabinetry, metal strap details in brass or blackened steel, hoods that run to the ceiling and anchor the whole wall. For years the goal was to hide ventilation. Now it's the focal point.

I'm glad about this one, because it means people are finally looking at something they should have been looking at all along. Underneath the plaster, it's still an appliance with a job.

The design opportunity is real, though. A hood surround is one of the few places you can introduce a completely different material, plaster against wood cabinets, a wood hood against painted ones, stone tile carried up behind it, and have it read as intentional rather than busy. It's the kitchen's mantelpiece.

5. Floating shelves, mixed with closed cabinetry

Pay attention to the word mixed, because that's the whole trend, and it's a correction.

A few years ago the look was all-open shelving, whole walls of it. It photographed beautifully and drove people quietly insane, because open shelving means every single thing you own is on display and gathering dust. In the Valley that second part is not a small thing: we run the AC hard for half the year and monsoon season drives fine dust into everything, so open shelves show it fast, which is exactly why closed doors do the heavy lifting here.

What's working now is the mix: two or three floating shelves as a deliberate moment, usually flanking the hood or a window, with closed cabinetry doing the actual storage everywhere else. You get the warmth and the visual break without signing up to style your whole kitchen every Saturday.

Material makes or breaks it. Thick wood shelves in a warm tone are the go-to right now, and a lovely counterweight to painted cabinets. My other favorite move: shelves cut from the same stone as your countertop. Fussy to execute, quietly spectacular in effect.

And the practical secret nobody tells you: stock open shelves with things you use daily, everyday plates, glasses, mugs. Items in constant rotation get washed constantly, so they never sit still long enough to gather dust. Decorative objects that live up there untouched are the ones that turn grey on you.

6. The butler's pantry

My favorite of the six, and the one I'd fight for. Call it a butler's pantry, a prep kitchen, a scullery, a back kitchen. The names are all fancier than the idea, which is beautifully blunt: give the mess somewhere else to go.

Think about what happened to kitchens. We opened them up and made the island the social center, and in doing so we put the dirty dishes, the blender, the mixing bowls, and the half-chopped onion directly into the room where we entertain. The butler's pantry is the fix. The main kitchen stays the beautiful room where people gather; the work that isn't photogenic happens six feet away, around a corner.

What tends to go in one:

You need less room than you think. A deep closet, the wide stretch of hallway between kitchen and dining room, a reworked corner against the garage wall. I've seen all three become excellent pantries. It's usually less about finding space than noticing space you'd stopped seeing. Butcher block or a durable quartz surface both work well here, and since it's back-of-house, it's a fine place to be practical rather than precious.

Frequently asked questions