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With our New Year’s resolutions freshly penned, January at Domino is all about change—the demo and construction kind. Welcome to Reno Month, where we pull back the curtain on the highs (moodboarding!) and lows (finessing the budget—again) that come with creating the home you’ve always wanted, whether that involves a top-to-bottom remodel or a rental kitchen facelift. Sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss a thing.
As we enter a new decade, it’s impossible for us not to dream about the future. And by the future, we mean what’s next in kitchen cupboards. Will chicken wire come back in style? Are metallic surfaces the next big thing? How do we feel about plywood?
We’ve seen enough of white and navy kitchens in the past 10 years (not that there’s anything wrong with a Carrara and indigo moment), and we’re ready for something new. To get us inspired, we rounded up 11 kitchen cabinet design ideas to take us into 2020 renovations—and beyond.
Southwestern-Style Kitchen Cabinets
In their Joshua Tree holiday rental, Louis Litrenta and his wife, Natalie Saunders, used Topciment (a nonporous plaster material) for their kitchen cabinet frames and finished them with reclaimed-wood doors to create an organic look that feels right at home in the desert.
Artful Hardware Kitchen Cabinets
Interior designer Jo Sampson broke all the rules in her London kitchen. Although she kept the fronts white, she used hardware as an opportunity to make a statement: Shard-like brass pulls run the length of the three panels.
Chicken Wire Kitchen Cabinets
Jenni Kayne’s Lake Tahoe home was begging for a rustic kitchen—which the fashion designer created with reclaimed-wood cupboards. On the upper shelves, she added chicken wire fronts to give them a traditional farmhouse touch that still feels fresh and modern.
Butter Yellow Kitchen Cabinets
Architect Michael Geller visually doubled the size of this 36-square-foot kitchen in Manhattan with a clever layout tweak, but the biggest impact came from adding custom traditional-style cupboards in a sunny butter yellow hue that amplifies morning rays.
Antique Brass Kitchen Cabinets
Liz Gardner spared no details when renovating her 100-year-old Minneapolis Neoclassical home, but the star of the show is her brass cabinet fronts that seem to radiate from within. Coupled with a room that gets tons of natural light, this space is pure brilliance.
Farmhouse-Style Kitchen Cabinets
Yes, farmhouse style falls squarely in the 2010 era, but we predict the trend will endure with just a few updated details: flat-front cabinets (as opposed to Shaker-style) with a thick frame and, yes, sink skirts.
Seamless Plywood Kitchen Cabinets
For the ultimate budget kitchen hack that doesn’t involve IKEA, try plywood instead. The affordable material lends itself well to a minimalist boho vibe, as shown in Serena Mitnik-Miller’s Topanga home. Finish off the look by putting your wooden bowl collection on display.
Semihandmade Kitchen Cabinets
A couple of years ago, Sarah Sherman Samuel launched a collection of IKEA cabinet tops and fronts with the brand Semihandmade, so it’s only natural that she’d include them in her newly-minted Grand Rapids home. Hers feature a subtle ribbed pattern similar to shiplap and are finished with demilune pulls that form a perfect brass circle when closed.
Tone-on-Tone Kitchen Cabinets
Joanne Duong Bartels and her woodworker husband, Luke Bartels, also used FSC-certified plywood, but instead of leaving it bare, they painted the cabinet fronts in a muddy gray hue and finished them with handles and pulls in the same hue for a monochromatic look that pops against the shimmery rose zellige backsplash.
Stainless Steel Kitchen Cabinets
When Katie and Brandon Conovitz hired the firm Husband Wife to overhaul their Brooklyn apartment, they gave the pair carte blanche. This opened up a world of possibilities for the designers, who opted for stainless steel doors and a dramatic gray marble island.
Upcycled Kitchen Cabinets
Sybil Domond wanted to use as many salvaged materials as possible in her Brooklyn kitchen renovation, so she sourced century-old French cement tiles and outfitted her cabinet fronts with raw walnut wood she found in the Bronx. Now that’s a direction we can get behind for 2020.
See more kitchen renovations we love: A Clever Layout Tweak Doubled the Storage in This 36-Square-Foot Kitchen A $1K Reno Decision Was the Key to Transforming This Narrow D.C. Kitchen Can You Spot the Optical Illusion in This Mint Green Kitchen?