Since home working through the pandemic has become more common, kitchens have become a focal point of the home from where people have been working in them. Making them the centre point of any family house, the pandemic solidified the kitchen as an important part of any home.
As we all saw at the beginning of COVID when DIY shops saw an incredible uptick in purchasing, and delays on products, DIY and renovation projects have never been more popular. Instead of spendisng savings on holidays and large family outings, people were spending their savings on making the place they were spending the most time in, their home, more personal to them.
Increasing demand
Kitchen’s pantry ideas have seen the largest increase in demand with Google search volumes increasing a staggering 147% and this is followed closely by kitchen pantry shelves seeing a 124% increase and kitchen island ideas increasing by 76%.
The buzz about ‘smart kitchens’ was also reflected by Google searches with almost 50% increase YoY. Search trends are useful, as they can say what is popular now and also it can help you to forecast to see what’s going to be popular in future, which is how we informed this article.
Kitchen pantry interest
As you could imagine, improving storage in the kitchen during the pandemic has been a big trend. When stockpiling first came to our attention in February 2020, people were buying month supplies of pasta, toiletries and cupboard products that don’t run out, in case of short supply.
With all this stock piling and people buying in bulk, this meant that storage space increased exponentially, no longer were traditional kitchen cupboards going to cut it, Instead, a lot of people looked to turn existing empty cupboard space or badly used cupboard space into a pantry, somewhere that bulk product could be stored and used effectively.
Another trend that helped this is the lack of restaurants and takeaways open and less people eating out. While they were times last year when we were able to eat in restaurants, either inside or out, for large amounts of the last year we have been able to properly eat food in restaurants. Therefore people have become more experimental at home, storing more food in their cupboards than ever before.
Smart electronics allowing for ever evolving kitchens.
From taps that are controlled through voice activated commands to lights that are motion sensitive, smart kitchens are a growing and popular trend in the kitchen industry.
As smart appliances are scalable and don’t require an extensive amount of retrofitting, smart kitchens can grow and evolve overtime as set the technology becomes more readily available. What may start as just a smart speaker plugged into a wall and some plugs that are controlled through it can turn into something really quite clever.
As technology evolves overtime, there is no doubt that kitchens will evolve with this, whether that kitchens are able to pre-heat ovens based on times of day. Or maybe microwaves that sense the food and cook it perfectly without the need for human interaction. There’s plenty of scope for interesting development here.
Open space and windows
There’s also a growing trend, perhaps not as drastically as the others, for windows and open space in kitchens. While many homes wanted to separate off living areas from working areas, kitchens were one area where people wanted to open them up into the outdoors.
Whether this featured bigger windows all the way down to French doors, there has been a growing trend around opening up kitchens to the outdoors or allowing more fresh air and natural light in.
As kitchens have become a working space, natural light and having a quick way to pop outside to catch a breather on a phone call has become evermore important, during the pandemic and this looks to continue as more people work in a hybrid manner.
Keeping it cool.
As well as storage options like building pantries, another massive area of increase was American fridge freezers. These large, tall fridge freezers are becoming more popular in England during the pandemic when people want to store more food. Such as their lunches and dinners, when they were at home instead of being in the office, has meant people need more space to store things.
On top of this, another interesting increase was noted in kitchen wine coolers, which saw an 60% increase since the end of 2019.
Easy to clean flooring.
With more people spending more time at home, children having to learn from home and generally more time spent in the kitchen, people have relished in the joy of an easy to clean kitchen flooring. Whereas tiles and other aesthetically pleasing options are still popular, vinyl has become one of the most popular types of kitchen flooring. Thanks to it’s lookalike ability to an image, variety of other stones as well as it’s easy to clean and replace design, vinyl is growing choice.
It’s a relatively cheap and can have any design that anyone wants to be printed onto it, making it good for those who want an Instagram worthy home. Or perhaps, they simply want something they can change easily as trends and their mind changes.
This article was written in collaboration with KNB Ltd., Nottingham’s kitchen specialists with over 30 years of experience.