Why is trend analysis so critical to kitchen design?
Why is trend analysis so critical to kitchen design, even when you’re not looking for a ‘trendy’ kitchen?
Many of the professionals involved in kitchen design and specification don’t see themselves as ‘trendy’; they are individuals and so are their customers. But whether being on trend is important to you or not, we are all influenced by trends, and that includes the buyers searching for their dream residential property. That’s why trend analysis is such an important part of kitchen design, and such a powerful tool for selling more homes.
What do we mean by kitchen design trends?
When we talk about trends we are not referring to everyone jumping on a single bandwagon and responding with a homogenous product. It’s much more subtle than that. What we’re referring to is tapping into a shared consciousness of influences that affect us all, whether we work in kitchen design or property, or we’re a potential home buyer.
When it comes to what we wear, it’s easy to see the style cues we take from TV, celebrity fashions and consumer goods. Even the least trendy of us wants to feel like we belong. The same principles apply to kitchen design and understanding emerging trends in fashion, interior design and consumer goods helps us tap into the influences that determine buyers’ choices on both a conscious and subconscious level.
It’s essential to look beyond kitchen design in isolation and tap into this wider concept of trends and influences. While many kitchen manufacturers simply base their ranges on current kitchen trends, here at Commodore Design we believe that trend analysis for kitchen design should go much further. That means looking beyond kitchen design and home interiors to consider other design worlds, including emerging trends in fashion, electrical devices, consumer goods, celebrity culture and media; all the things home buyers consume which help them define who they are and how they live.
Kitchen design sits at the heart of our lifestyles and our life goals
More than anywhere else in the home, our kitchens make a statement about who we are, how we live and what’s important to us. For Generation X, it’s not the gas guzzling status vehicles that express identity, it’s the environment they create in the home, with the food culture and social space provided by a stylish kitchen at its heart. As kitchen manufacturers, we are selling much more than a place to cook; we’re selling a dream.
The challenge for kitchen suppliers is to look beyond the consumer trends that excite people now and identify those that will define consumers’ sense of style and lifestyles in the years ahead. By looking at these style and design influences, kitchen manufacturers have the ability to translate elements such as colour, shape, texture and technology into kitchen design. The problem is, few kitchen suppliers invest in developing these insights. Consequently, too much kitchen design is generic and often looks both outdated and out of kilter with the FMCG items that consumers use to express their taste and identity in every other aspect of their lives.
At Commodore Design, we think differently. We know that kitchens sell homes and we believe that kitchen design is central to creating homes that people fall in love with. To deliver iconic kitchen design we work hard to understand developers’ customers and the design cues that will make our kitchens feel instantly in-tune with what they like and how they live.
How does future trend analysis work to achieve kitchen design that stands out and sells?
For many kitchen suppliers, trend analysis means updating what’s gone before and looking around the marketplace to understand what’s happening now. With this approach, you might expect something that looks modern and follows contemporary kitchen design lifestyle factors, such as open-plan living/dining, for example. But kitchen manufacturersthat use this type of sales data driven approach to understanding kitchen design create me-too, generic kitchens which will no longer be attractive to buyers when the development is completed, potentially years after specification. The only way to ensure a kitchen design is not outdated when the marketing suite showcases a development to buyers is to analyse future trends.
At Commodore Design, we don’t think that’s enough to achieve stand out for residential developments. What we’re aiming for is exceptional kitchen design that creates the jaw-drop moment as soon as a buyer walks in because the style and design cues articulate everything they aspire to in every aspect of their life.
So how do we embed aspiration and iconic style into kitchen design?
To explain, let’s go back in time a little and take a step away from the kitchen design sector. As a really tangible example of how design trends migrate from sector to sector, let’s consider the influence of iconic technology on the most popular colours of car.
Back in 1999, the most aspirational car colour transitioned from blue to turquoise, echoing the turquoise of the groundbreaking iMac computer. By 2004, everything from cars to washing machines was silver, reflecting the explosion in consumer technology and, by 2010, this had changed again to black, influenced by the launch of the black iPad. The launch of the white iPhone in 2012 prompted another shift in popular car colours, this time from black to white. Now, the story continues, with cars sporting pastel tones referencing the shades used by Apple, and Space Grey Mac Books giving us a new take on grey, across everything from cars to PVC windows.
There are no coincidences here. The shift in car colours hasn’t happened because manufacturers and consumers have independently shared the same epiphany, but because aspirational consumer goods trigger a response to similar design cues in other consumer categories, including property and kitchen design.
It’s just one example of how different aspirational and status-driven products influence each other. Whether consumers see themselves as a trend setter, a trend follower or a trend avoider, we are all affected by the trends around us. Successful kitchen suppliers must also absorb and leverage those influences to deliver kitchen design that optimises a development’s sales potential.
Taking kitchen design to the next level with future trend analysis
As kitchen suppliers to residential developers and housebuilders, we understand the kitchen design not only needs to reflect a huge array of design influences that are happening now; it also needs to consider trends that will emerge months and years from now. That’s because the kitchen design specified today will be what sells a home later in the project cycle when the marketing suite is ready.
Our approach is to analyse what happening across consumer influences and consider emerging trends both here in the UK and across Europe, where our sister companies operate. We can then feed all of that insight into our kitchen design process to ensure our kitchens never look dated and always bring something fresh to the development and the buyer.
Which trends are influencing what happens next in kitchen design?
Design cues from everything from architecture to technology will continue to influence kitchen design for Commodore Design, taking us beyond what most developers expect from kitchen manufacturers in terms of insight and added value.
We’ll also continue to bring a clear understanding of lifestyle and consumer agendas to our kitchen designmethodology, and it’s clear that the COVID-19 pandemic will be a factor in this. During lockdown, the experience of being in the home and isolated from green space and nature has reiterated the importance of the outdoors to consumers’ health, wellbeing and lifestyles. We believe this will be a huge influence on successful kitchen design. As the hub of the home, the kitchen is a key area for bringing the outdoors into a property and kitchen suppliers should consider how biophilia can be used to create a sense of connection with nature in the use of colour, texture and natural light.
The slower pace of life during lockdown has also changed people’s experience of nature and reinforced the importance of sustainability and durability in how we live. As a result, we envisage an increased use of durable high-tech materials in kitchen design that combine performance with aesthetics.
How to spot kitchen design trends for your development
At Commodore Design, our bespoke as standard approach to kitchen design means that we work with housebuilders and developers to tailor the design influences and customer profiles in our design toolkit to their specific project.
We believe it’s never too early to start gathering inspiration for your kitchen design, which is why our Pinterest boards are such a great resource for so many of our customers. If you want a window into the world of kitchen design trends, why not take a look here?