The Invisible Kitchen Design Trend
BWS Marketing • Jan 14, 2022

Kitchen remodeling has always followed interesting year-on-year trends. Eco-friendly kitchens are on the rise along with darker paint colors and mixed metals. There are many stylish ways to upgrade your kitchen and improve its functional flow. But our favorite kitchen trend this year is the invisible kitchen. Inspired by hotel rooms, tiny houses, and studio apartments; kitchens are getting smaller – even pocket-sized. Combined with the latest in hidden door and no-seam cabinetry techniques, you can design an entire luxury kitchen – and then hide it in a beautiful open-plan room.

 

The Invisible Kitchen Trend

Invisible kitchens combine sleek cutting-edge kitchen technology with blending interior design. Kitchens are built into nooks and streamlined to take up minimal space. Surfaces and appliances fold out of hidden-handle cabinetry. One-wall kitchens can even be folded away behind a sliding door, making your kitchen truly invisible. With small appliances and a glass-top stove built into the cabinetry, you can build an entire kitchen into your open-plan home without dominating half the family space. In fact, your kitchen can completely disappear.

This trend embraces open-plan living in a new way that provides luxury cooking but doesn’t center life around the kitchen itself. Invisible kitchens can fold away and their entire floor space can be used for other aspects of life.

Invisible kitchen design is also a hot trend in commercial break room design, providing amenities without cluttering decor with a sprawling kitchen space.

 

Fold-Away and Camouflaged Kitchens

There are two ways to disappear a kitchen. The first is to camouflage the kitchen-like elements. Make the cabinets look like wood paneling and the stovetop to appear as a simple decorative counter. Conceal the kitchen elements, and the kitchen disappears into a well-decorated nook. The other method is a fold-away kitchen, which can be done when a one-wall kitchen is covered by a long sliding door.

 

Closing the Kitchen Into Cabinets

One popular option is to close your kitchen into cabinetry, turning the space into a craft or dining room more easily. Kitchens can ‘Disappear” behind tall and slide-away cabinet doors.  While your kitchen takes up the same amount of space, it no longer dominates the room. This is a great transition for open-plan homes and studio spaces where the kitchen’s floorspace is valuable for other activities. Dancers might fold away their kitchen to safely clear the floor. A folded kitchen makes a more formal open dining room. A kitchen hidden behind cabinetry also makes a better Zoom backdrop for multi-purpose modern homes.

 

Drawing a Curtain

Instead of cabinets, you can hang a long custom curtain around the countertop space of your kitchen, or even just along the bottom of the lower cabinets to hide the counters. This is a great way to make your kitchen a multi-purpose space without the extra carpentry. You can measure your kitchen for drapes and have custom curtains made from elegant yet washable material.

 

Countertop Covers for Sink and Stove top

Disappear your kitchen into an elegant sideboard by covering the sink and stove top with elegant blending tops. You can use countertop remnants to make subtle matching tops or you can use polished butcher block for a lovely natural-looking riser. Both can be effective in disguising your sink and stovetop as a simple sideboard countertop. In an office setting, leave the sink open but cover the stovetop during non-meal hours.

 

Seamless Kitchen Cabinet Design

Cabinet design can be done in many ways. One of the most popular right now is the seamless cabinets that appear to be wood paneling. The handles are indents hidden along the edge or underside of each cabinet door. This makes it easy to blend your cabinets into the hallway design around or create a smooth facade that barely appears to be cabinetry for a kitchen.

 

Window Treatments for Multi-Space Design

Kitchen windows and open living spaces often have two different designs for curtains and blinds. But a stylish dual-purpose window treatment can help transform your sunny kitchen into a cool living room or craft area when your invisible kitchen is folded away.

Consider replacing your cottage curtains with sleek rolling blinds that match the overall decor of the room. And don’t forget to color-match your window treatments with the unified color scheme of your beautiful multi-purpose room design.

 

The Disappearing One-Wall Kitchen Door

One-wall kitchens hold a special place in the invisible kitchen trend. From tiny homes to penthouse hotel suites, one-wall kitchens allow you to easily and beautifully disguise a fully-functional kitchen with a single set of panels or doors. One-wall kitchens are recessed into the wall so that the wall is flush with the front of the counter, stove, fridge, and cabinetry. When closed behind panels, a one-wall kitchen can completely disappear.

 

Are you looking for an all-new way to create a beautiful personalized space? Contact us today for custom window treatments and design innovations to transform your home style.

Expert Advice by Just Blinds

The Leading Window Treatment Trends of 2024

By Autumn Hooper • 07 Feb, 2024
Each year, styles in window treatments come and go. Trends that were hot last year may carry over to the new interior decor season or may be replaced by something new. In 2024, we are looking at a delightful set of trends in blinds, shades, and curtains that embrace the developing attitudes and popular colors that are already giving the year a unique stylistic personality. At Just Blinds, we are delighted to keep up with the trends, helping homeowners, designers, and property managers to create stunning spaces that align with the latest in window treatment trends. The Hot Trends of 2023 Blinds and Shades Last year in 2023, we saw a great collection of trends, many of which have evolved and strengthened with the new year. 2023 explored the innovations of cell shades and honeycomb shades for the benefits of insulation and light control. Motorization gained a prominant place in both home and office design, and decorators discovered the dynamic possibilities of shades that operate from both the bottom and the top on floor-to-ceiling tracks. Texture saw a real debut with natural colors like wood finishes, linen, dusty rose, and moss green. Though bold patterns also had their day in the sun. The Trending 2024 Window Treatments In 2024, you may recognize a few trends still going strong from the year before, which is good news for those who decorated last year because your style is likely still right on-trend. But we are also seeing new trends developing with elegant enthusiasm. Smart Home Blinds The trend for motorized shades has naturally evolved to favor smart home controls. With a simple voice command, you can take control of all the motorized shades in a room, in your entire home, or set each shade to exactly the height and opacity you desire. Warm Neutrals and Bold Natural Colors Color trends favor a more natural palette. Neutral colors are warmer, even the grays and charcoals have a honey undertone, while natural colors like mossy and forest green are growing stronger in hue paired with a jewelbox of flower petal colors. If you're following the Colors of the Year, you may have also noticed an adoration of ocean blues, and you can match those blues with slightly darker or lighter blinds for beautiful effect. Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Materials Natural materials and textures were popular in 2023, and 2024 takes this trend even further. Blinds made out of recycled materials are now on the rise alongside the growing popularity of blinds made from super-sustainable plants like bamboo, hemp, jute, and grass cloth. These offer natural colors, dynamic textures, and the delight of eco-friendly design. Gauzy Sheer Elegance Sheer curtains and semi-sheer blinds are also in fashion; a classic style that has been floating near the top of popularity for literal centuries. Sheer curtains and blinds maintain privacy while allowing sunlight into the room in a gently diffused glow. They also layer excellently with more robust window treatments. Creative Window Treatment Layering Speaking of layering, we are seeing an enthusiastic embrace of creatively layered styles. Wooden shutters, gauzy curtains, and black-out blinds are among the most popular layers, but decorators are getting creative with how they choose to to layer their window treatments, using both multiple fabrics and structures at the same time. Find the Blinds that Best Suit Your Needs How can you choose fantastic and on-trend blinds that perfectly suit your design needs? Fortunately, the diversity of this year's trends leave room for almost any personal sense of style and the individual needs of each room's windows. Start with the size of your windows and your room's existing color palette. Decide if you want to match, accent, or contrast the colors of the room. Then choose the opacity, privacy, and level of motorized control you desire. This should guide you toward a specific selection that will work well for your room. From there, it's a matter of specific features and your personal sense of style. Reach Out for Expert and On-Trend Advice If you are getting ready to decorate a room and want the perfect window treatments for 2024, we are only a phonecall or a visit away. Give us a call for expert advice in the right blinds or shades for each window in your home. Our on-trend window treatment experts will be glad to help tailor your window treatment design to your personal tastes, the latest trends, and the style of each of your rooms.

Beat the Heat: Best Choices to Keep The Interior of Your Home Cool

20 Jul, 2023
Is your AC bill keeping you down this summer? Is your home too hot? Window treatments can help cool your home, but you need to choose the right ones and use them correctly. Not all window coverings are made equal. Here are some of the best options to help keep your home comfortable and reduce costs this summer: Cellular or honeycomb shades. These are specifically designed to provide a high level of insulation that keeps the heat out of your home. They also don't block the view when completely drawn. As a bonus, you can get them in a wide variety of colors and patterns to match your home and in both top-down and bottom-up configurations. Drapery. Old-fashioned curtains can be surprisingly effective. Choose a medium color and have us add a white plastic backing to reflect heat out of your home. You can also use drapes to block some of the heat without excluding much light, allowing you to enjoy natural light flowing through your drapes. Fabric Roman shades. These are a distinctive option that really dresses up a room, and if you choose the kind with several layers they will definitely help keep the heat out. We have light filtering and blackout options and everything in between. Why Should You Use These Types of Shades or Blinds? The two reasons are to save money and help protect the environment. Good shades keep your home cooler and this means your air conditioning systems don't have to work as hard and use as much energy. In the northern hemisphere, it's most important to have heat-reducing treatments on your southern windows and you can allow more light in through windows that face north. Both cellular and Roman shades can also be motorized and even put on timers to close the shades when you are not there and then let light in when you return. The small amount of energy used by motorized shades is much less than that lost through naked windows. All of these shades can also add to the aesthetics of your room. Cellular shades are great to add a pop of color or a subtle pattern. Both drapery and Roman shades give a soft feel to your windows that then spreads to the rest of your room. What is the Best Choice? The best choice of the three depends on your personal aesthetics. Our designers can help you make the right choice. If you want motorized shades, cellular shades are the lightest and thus use the least energy, and can roll all the way up and down, leaving your windows completely unrestricted. Roman shades are more visible, but can be used to add fabric and color to a room. Many people still love the look of traditional window drapes. Note that you can also combine shades and drapes for the effect you want, both in terms of reducing heat loss and in terms of aesthetics. How Much Can I Actually Save? The amount you save depends on the kind of window covering you use and how much thermal gain your house typically experiences. The larger your windows, in general, the larger the benefit, especially south-facing windows. For example, medium-colored draperies with a white plastic backing can reduce heat gain by as much as 33% for that window. Most window treatments, though, reduce overall heat gain by about 10%. This can significantly reduce your bills, by $100 to $200 a month during the summer. Using the right window treatment can make your home more comfortable in the summer and save money while preserving the environment. For advise on which window treatments to choose for your home and to see our selection of blinds and shades, contact Just Blinds today.
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