New trends for your kitchen

As lifestyles evolve, so must businesses that cater to homeowners. They must provide updated products that people now seek.

For instance, kitchens are no longer rooms unto themselves. In more and more homes they are part of a larger multipurpose room, which allows families and friends to gather, entertain, cook, confer over homework and watch television.

Dedicated separate spaces like dining rooms, living rooms, family rooms and kitchens have melded together into large combined spaces.

“The kitchen is the heart of the home and people have finally realized that you are not going to get everyone out of the kitchen. So they are just making it easier to move between the kitchen area and other spaces,” said Mark Seigle, president of Seigle's Cabinets.

So kitchen layouts and cabinetry have changed to meet these needs.

The advent of dual-chef households has also changed the way in which kitchens are used. Both husband and wife often want their own prep sinks and other food preparation areas so that they are not tripping over each other in the kitchen. So this is having a major impact on kitchen design, even in smaller homes, Seigle said.

Islands are becoming even more important for the sociability factor and so that multiple cooks can share a kitchen easily.

The increase in multigenerational households has also altered kitchen design.

“Homes today need to accommodate more people with different needs than in the past, while remaining aesthetically pleasing,” he said. “Younger people are also interested in planning for the future so that they can age in place and remain in their homes for many years. So a lot of thought is being put into invisible, disability-friendly design.”

Effective storage is also necessary in these larger, multigenerational households, so more pull-out shelving that keeps food and cookware easily in reach is becoming important.

“We are also seeing many more cases of two households in one home, where a young adult or older parent gets their own bedroom, bathroom and small kitchen, separate from the main kitchen,” Seigle said.

More cabinetry is also finding its way into larger laundry rooms, with dedicated space for folding clothes or making crafts, as well as highly organized mudrooms with storage lockers, message boards, electronic charging stations and so forth.

“Laundry is a fact of life and you need space to fold it, so people are designing laundry rooms that often double as mudrooms with lots more space. They are even designing the room for messy crafts so you don't have people using glue in your kitchen,” he said.

Aesthetically, homeowners are gravitating toward contrasting cabinets within the kitchen with the island cabinets looking totally different from the perimeter cabinets. Kitchens featuring painted cabinets as a focal point to accent stained wood cabinets elsewhere are very popular now, he said.

Islands and stove cabinets are the areas most commonly chosen to be the painted accents. The colors most often chosen are earthy greens, chiffon yellows, deep blues, browns, reds, black and gray, Seigle said.

“Painted cabinets offer a comfort factor. They look homey and warm and people like that,” he added.

Transitional styling that straddles the line between classic and modern design is particularly hot because it can work in vintage, traditional or contemporary homes. Today's homeowners like the “less is more,” sleek, timeless look with fewer moldings, Seigle said, but then they personalize them with “wow” accents.

Seigle's Cabinets has a long and storied history. It was founded in Elgin in 1881 as the Elgin Lumber Co. by Lee Borden of the Borden Dairy family. In 1941, Mark's father purchased it and changed the name to Seigle's Lumber.

“We sold every type of building materials at one time and had stores in 12 or 14 cities,” Seigle said.

In 2005, Seigle sold his building supply stores to a British company that four years later chose to pull out of the Midwest, so Seigle chose to repurchase only the cabinetry and countertops portion of his family's firm.

“It was the part of the business that was closest to profitability and it is also the most exciting because of the design and fashion involved. It is a lot more fun to sell cabinetry than it is to sell two-by-fours and other building materials,” Seigle said.

Since the repurchase, the market has continued to be very challenging, he admits.

But since Seigle's sells a full line of cabinetry, from lower-end items that people are installing in foreclosed homes to make them marketable again to high-end custom cabinetry, the company is weathering the storm, Seigle said.

Seigle's now has three stores in Elgin, Mundelein and Chicago and is about to open a fourth in Geneva. All of its salespeople are also designers, so they stand ready to assist homeowners in designing their dream kitchens. There is no charge for their design services.

“We just ask that they do some homework before they come in,” Seigle said. “Take some measurements of their current kitchen and sketch it out, including where the window and door openings are and where the water and gas is. It doesn't need to be fancy or perfect, just a general idea. We also ask that they list out what they love and what they hate about their current kitchen. Our designers can then help them design exactly what they have been hoping for.”

For more information about Seigle's Cabinets, visit www.seigles.com or call (847) 742-2000.