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20 Kitchen Styles to Suit Every Type of Cook
There is a huge range of kitchen styles to consider if you want to do a kitchen remodel. You can easily create a look that’s traditional, contemporary, farmhouse, rustic, and much more, and picking different styles for your cabinets can help pull the whole look together. Sometimes, your kitchen style is an easy decision, especially if you already have an overall style for your home. In other instances, this can be challenging.
Since the kitchen is the heart of your home, it’s a space where you cook meals, family gathers around, and you make memories. Kitchen styles are functional, utilitarian, and deeply personal. This is why we’re going to outline 20 different kitchen styles you can choose to suit every type of cook and design style.
There are several kitchen styles that you can consider when you upgrade or remodel the area. We’re going to outline some of the most popular ones you can consider below. Kitchen by mtnbikrrrr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
1. Beach
As the name suggests, beach kitchen styles give you a coastal feel right inside your home. You’ll pair cooler blue shades with thematically appropriate accents like wicker, seagrass, and sand to create a fun vacation-themed setting that is fun, inspiring, and relaxing. You can add sheer window treatments over larger glass windows, and this gives you plenty of warm sunlight throughout the room. Coastal-themed flooring is also popular with unique finishes and lighter colors to inject more of a beachy feel, and adding freshly whitewashed paint treatments help to add a resort-feel that is elegant and casual.
This is a great kitchen style to use if you want something relaxed and fun, and you can use sea glass, seashells, and ocean-related items to create a cool and calm environment that makes you feel like you’re on vacation every day when you step into the room.
2. Contemporary
The contemporary design is a popular house style, but it’s also a popular kitchen style. A kitchen with this style usually has a mixture of old and new items with a polished but casual look to give it a very sleek and timeless finished look that matches well with several decor schemes.
Traditional kitchens usually rely on classic design elements by vintage or ornate detailing to give the space a familiar and more conventional appeal, this kitchen style differs because it usually incorporates a much more minimalistic and artistic look. This kitchen usually comes unadorned and free of a lot of excess details. Instead, it focuses more heavily on the artistic feel and the relationship between colors, surfaces, and materials.
Modern takes on the contemporary design style tend to have lacking symmetry, and you get much more geometric looks. Horizontal lines give you a much more user-friendly and straightforward appeal. Small details like brushed silver knobs, concrete flooring, and artfully or strategically placed lacquer or chrome detailing with tiny pops of color help to soften the industrial edge.
The sky’s the limit with this decor style, and there is no hard and fast blueprint that outlines this kitchen style. Instead, the design gets defined by a clean aesthetic, minimalist decorating, bold and strong colors, and embracing unexpected details. It has a very unique and inviting look, and the styling heavily mimics a traditional Zen environment that is free of visual chaos, clutter, and adornment.
It allows for things like polished granite countertops to glean while being unadorned, and you can add punches of color by adding a cheery and bright bowl of fresh fruit or vase of flowers. At the core, this kitchen style lets the materials you use to build it stand out and take center stage while giving you visual and physical sensations that create a peaceful, calm, and tranquil space.
3. Cottage
You may have heard of a cottage garden, but have you heard of a cottage kitchen style? This style usually comes packed with compact, quirky, and rustic details. The original features in this kitchen get restored, and it’s common to conceal your state-of-the-art appliances or make them more discrete. This space usually incorporates nautical or industrial kitchen lighting ideas, treasured collectibles or finds, and traditional metals for cabinet hardware or faucets.
When you look at the cabinetry in this kitchen style, you want to go traditional. Look for cabinets with decorative details and raised panels, or try to find beadboard designs (tongue and groove), or cabinets with more intricate open grate doors. Along with considering fitted cabinetry, freestanding furniture to help you display your china is a plus.
Try using distressed paintwork to give your kitchen a well-loved and lived-in look that complements your industrial accessories. You can also go with more simple painted finishes in off or pure white to brighten up smaller kitchens where you have limited windows.
This is a very rustic and welcoming decor style that many people love for the simplicity and charm. Cottage Kitchen by Paul Flint / CC BY-SA 2.0
4. Craftsman
There’s a very earthy and organic feel to this kitchen style, and it manages to be comforting, inviting, and unique all at one time. This style became very popular in the early 20th century during the Arts and Crafts movement in the Industrial Revolution. During this time the architecture and home design fields took a very artisanal look. Kitchen cabinets, tabletops, furniture, and more all got built by hand. They came designed to last a lifetime and created with a high level of care.
The cornerstone of this kitchen style is using natural materials, and natural woods that come in different shades of brown are very common. The typical accents for this style almost always have expertly crafted and solidly built cabinets and counters. You’ll find intricate stonework and woodwork running throughout your kitchen design to give the whole space a very artisan feel.
The whole design is meant to be inviting and rustic in a very low-key and down-to-earth way. The setting is trying to recreate a time when everything was much more simple and the kitchen was a cook’s haven.
5. Eclectic
This kitchen style is a huge mish-mash of contrasts, mixtures, scale, and composition that is challenging to pull off, but it can work. It’s common to see intricate odds and ends next to bold paint colors, an extensive trinket collection, and several textural elements all in one room. The design concept’s eclecticism offers more of a reflection of your varied tastes, personality, and preferences instead of a pile of unrelated design concepts.
If you do it correctly, this kitchen design gives you an easy and cool confidence with mismatched items that fit together seamlessly and centrally placed color pops give you a sense of consistency. The end result is a very personalized look and feel that is packed full of rich texture and color that is visually stimulating while being inviting.
6. Farmhouse
When you think of the farmhouse kitchen style, you most likely picture a space that embraces the rustic but modern look. They usually have shiplap walls, open shelving, and apron-front sinks. This idea seamlessly combines a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere with traditional features and modern appliances.
When it comes to your kitchen cabinets in this style, you want to visualize traditional raised panel designs over flat doors. The finish you paint on is usually a warm neutral, clean white, or nature-inspired greens. Also, the wood you pick out for your cabinets in this kitchen style include cherry, maple, oak, and walnut that have a pretty natural color and a pleasing grain.
7. Industrial
Most people don’t want to associate the industrial style with your kitchen style, but it can work surprisingly well. This design features larger windows, high ceilings, exposed brick, wide-open areas, beams, piping, and more. You get a very modern but rugged feel, and it’s very commonly found in apartments, lifts, and detached homes. It has an open plan with textured and rough materials like metal, brick, wood, or even cement to create a very solid and lasting look.
8. Mediterranean
This kitchen style offers Grecian styling elements that tie back to the culture, art, and geographical beauty of this region. You’ll design your kitchen to invoke the complexity and beauty of Greek design, and this includes adding earth tones, bold colors, glazing techniques, and very textured walls that bring you to a more primitive time.
9. Modern
Just like the contemporary style we went over earlier, this one incorporates a sexy appeal with a sleek sophistication. It’s very similar to contemporary styling as it works to keep accoutrement, clutter, and adornment throughout your kitchen very minimal. It’s common to see gorgeous bare countertop expenses with small pops of color for accents that allows you to showcase the polished countertops’ artistry and high-quality materials. Not loading up your counter with clutter allows whoever sees it to take in the full quality and beauty of the pieces that dominate the space.
Using high-quality materials is the hallmark of this kitchen style, and it can encompass exotic materials that are luxurious to look at or touch. You’ll have small luxurious touches throughout your kitchen, and any modern or classic pieces you showcase have consistent quality with a very simple and straightforward construction. You want to see timeless silhouettes and clean lines to add an upscale and elegant feel.
10. Rustic
The rustic kitchen style is very multifaceted and versatile in the design and appeal. Since this is such a broad category, you have virtually limitless options for which direction you want to go. However, the core elements of this kitchen include an abundance of stone and wood elements, and it’s common to see distressed finishes, handwoven tapestries, textured pieces with natural fibers, and unfinished surfaces.
It’s very similar to what you’d get if you looked at farmhouse or craftsman kitchen styles, but it differs by taking a more eclectic approach while keeping the nature-inspired roots firmly in view. If you picture a log cabin interior, you’ll get a good idea on this design. You want to try to invoke the feeling of nature, practicality, and simplicity.
Rustic kitchens embrace warm wood tones with a lot of woodgrain features. However, you can also add more modern looks by incorporating sleek counters or eclectic pieces. Croft Washed Kitchen by Steve Larkin / CC BY-NC 2.0
11. Shaker
This design dates way back to the 18th century, and these cabinets offer a very enduring style that goes very well with anyone who wants a country kitchen. The doors usually come with a five-piece construction to them with a flat panel insert that gets framed with rails above and below it. It also has stiles on either side that gives them details and interest without crossing into fussy territory.
The Shakers came from the United Kingdom to the United States in 1774 with the dream of establishing a utopian community, and the doors on this kitchen style ensures that there is no material waste while being sturdy and practical, just like the sect’s principles of simplicity, utility, and honesty.
The end result is you get a space that is neither contemporary or traditional, but it’s still timeless. Maple and cherry wood are very common materials, but oak works to give you a much more classic appearance. You can also put a few coats of light paint on the cabinets and around the kitchen to give it a very warm and inviting feel. You can make a statement with dark paint colors or trick the mind into thinking that your space is larger than it is with lighter colors and natural light reflection.
12. Slab
This is a more Euro kitchen style that isn’t as popular in the United States, but it offers a very streamlined, sleek, and contemporary look to your kitchen with clean lines and minimal clutter. It sets apart from the modern look that usually combines finishes and colors by having a single hue in the whole space. However, just because it uses one color doesn’t mean that it’s boring.
You can add a high gloss finish to a vibrant color or combine the two to create a very eye-catching and high-impact scheme. Also, painted finishes in neutrals or understated whites along with dark hues are also possible for the slab style.
If you’re after a slightly warmer finish in your kitchen style but you do really like the more traditional aspects of this category, you can use maple or cherry wood to give it a slightly warmer look and a more inviting feel.
13. Traditional
The traditional style of kitchen decor doesn’t skip the embellishments. It’s just as functional and practical as the contemporary kitchen style, but they have a very heavy focus on the small details. It’s common to see cabinets that have raised door panels instead of flat ones in this kitchen style, and they can be beveled or scalloped and have detailing in the form of mitered or profiling corners.
It’s also popular to add decorative crown molding to your wall on your floor-to-ceiling cabinetry, and this helps to draw your eyes upwards while adding to how grand the whole kitchen feels. Toe kicks can make your cabinets look like they’re freestanding instead of securely attached to the wall.
It’s also common to have a kitchen island in this style with pilasters or corbels together with wainscoting to turn it into a focal point of the space. You can purchase a kitchen island premade or have one customized to fit your space. It’s common to see pale shades and white colors for the paint, and it’s also popular to add different finishes in the space. You could have your cabinets and island in richly or mid-toned woods with a dramatic brighter or darker paint hue with it and a second finish.
14. Transitional
This is one of the most popular kitchen styles today, and it ranks right up with the contemporary design in the United States. It works to blend traditional and contemporary aesthetics, and this helps you to create a classic but elegant space that is very functional. One thing that stands out in this style is the cabinets, and it’s popular to add Shaker or similar designs that come with inset panels and simple but clean lines. This introduces a very subtle detailing to the room.
You’ll have traditional wooden elements too, and white is the favorite color in this kitchen style. You may also see other pale neutrals like gray and beige. However, blue is also slowly growing in appeal, and this can be a little more bold. Another trend that is rising with this style is to incorporate a dual color scheme with a neutral base on the cabinets and walls and a kitchen island in a different color. Also, it’s popular to show off the woodgrain in the cabinets instead of painting them.
