Because kitchens and bathrooms are explicitly functional spaces, their success is inextricably tied to the products – appliances, tapware, surfaces, ceramics – you choose for them. But of course, we expect more than mere functionality. The kitchen has become the beating heart of the modern home, an open space designed to work seamlessly and look great while it’s at it! And the bathroom? Well, more often it’s bathrooms, with ensuites and powder rooms seemingly at every turn. We take these expectations with us, too, to shopping centres, offices, public buildings, everywhere.
The old house-party cliché about your wallflower friends hiding away in the kitchen doesn’t make sense anymore, because the kitchen now takes centre stage in the modern home. And with this glamourous new role comes new demands on appearance and functionality. Kitchen cupboards, for example, are no longer just kitchen cupboards, they’re a highly visible part of the furniture and fittings in an open-plan living space. The choice of a timber veneer like poplar plywood, say, must consider colour, building material and furniture selections in adjoining lounge and dining areas.
This is especially true for the kitchen island bench, which has become a hub around which daily life mills, where meals are prepared and eaten, laptops are perched, keys are plonked and, at parties, finger food and drinks are laid out. As a result, the options for kitchen benchtop material have become highly varied and, for some, vexing! There are laminate benchtops, mouldable acrylic benchtops, concrete slab benchtops, porcelain benchtops, quartz surfaces and more, all differentiated by durability, aesthetics and cost.
Of course, a kitchen benchtop isn’t typically a flat, uninterrupted surface. It accommodates kitchen sinks, tapware and cooktops, and the choices available for these products reflect two common and distinct kitchen design directions: minimalism and expressed functionality. The minimalist approach relies on simplicity of form and concealment of appliances and clutter – for example, an induction cooktop sitting flush with the benchtop, a sculptural spout over a single centre-bowl undermount sink, a built-in oven and integrated dishwasher, and joinery with a concealed hinge system, lift system and soft-closing drawer system that doesn’t require handles or pulls.
At the other end of the spectrum is the kitchen that celebrates the central role that cooking now occupies in modern Australia. Here we might find a swivel-spout sink mixer over a stainless steel sink, a prominent dual-fuel cooker or combi-steam oven, a French-door refrigerator (or even a glass-door refrigerator, for those brave enough to put that on public display!), a built-in coffee machine, a kitchen chute and kitchen recycling system, and overhead, a stainless steel island rangehood that knowingly references the utilitarian style of a commercial kitchen. (Materiality plays a significant role in expressing functionality, with stainless steel and chrome the classic choices.)
Both of these kitchen themes can be augmented with premium inclusions, such as wine fridges, dish warming drawers, and instant boiling water, chilled filtered tapwater and sparkling filtered water dispensers. You know, the kinds of things that will find you shepherding all of your party guests straight to the kitchen!
Just remember, not everyone loves talking about kitchens. For some, the thought of vacillating between acrylic splashbacks and aluminium splashbacks, or between a gas cooktop or an electric cooktop, is just plain wearying! If that’s you, the best solution might be to install a kitchen system. These range from flat-pack kitchenettes to high-end kitchen design systems customised to your space and requirements, so all you have to do is send out the invitations and prepare the hors d’oeuvres.
Just as the kitchen has evolved over time, so has the bathroom. It’s still a private space, of course, but much like the kitchen, it’s expected to offer more than a utilitarian experience. You’ll now hear it described as a sanctuary or retreat, it’s much more likely to be bathed in natural light or provide garden views, and there’ll likely be space and facilities for more than one person to wash and groom at the same time.
The prevailing trend for these rooms is the use of bathroom furniture and sanitaryware as sculptural insertions in a minimalist environment. With tiled walls and floors providing a materially uniform backdrop, a stone freestanding bath, a vessel basin on top of a floating vanity, and a wall-hung toilet pan with slimline cistern or in-wall cistern can be specified for their beauty and simplicity of form (practical types will note that these are easy to keep clean, too!). In this uncluttered environment, the emergence of stainless steel shower channels, floor-level shower trays, threshold drains and grates has meant that the shower area is defined simply by a glass showerscreen. We’ve come a long way from the stock-standard shower-over-bath, vanity basin and back-to-wall toilet suite combo!
Specialist bathroom accessories and fittings make the bathroom experience seamless and efficient. There are heated towel rails, towel hooks and towel rings, soap dispensers and soap dishes, toilet roll dispensers, toothbrush holders and illuminated mirrors to suit every bathroom design. But perhaps the item we use most, and that divides opinion based on personal preference, is the shower. Or more specifically, the showerhead. For some, there is no compromise – it’s an overhead rain shower or nothing – but others prefer the flexibility of a shower column, which combines an overhead shower rose with a handshower. Either way, it’s a great time to be alive and in need of a wash!
That goes for washing clothes too. No-one gets excited about a stint in the laundry, but with the recent advances in washing machine technology, at least it’s a bit less of a chore. Front-loader washing machines in particular are energy- and water-efficient, and boast high spin-speeds that in turn reduce drying times. Combined with a new condenser dryer, which, unlike traditional tumble dryers, don’t vent hot, moist air into the laundry, and washing clothes can be quite a civilised – and speedy – process.
When we step away from these private-sanctuary bathrooms, our expectations don’t suddenly fall through the floor. Washrooms in offices and public buildings need to feel comfortable and private, and be highly efficient, so that people can come in and out as quickly as possible. Product selection plays a key role in this, with function-specific fixtures and fittings created especially for shared bathrooms and toilets, such as high-speed hand dryers, infrared taps or touch-free thermostatic mixers, and accessible toilet solutions like freestanding increased-height toilet suites.
The same goes for kitchens in office buildings, in the sense that seemingly small features and product inclusions can elevate the experience of using the space, in turn increasing employer satisfaction and productivity. Install the right water cooler, drinking fountain or water refill station and it will be used and appreciated by a worker many times a day. The same goes for an everyday appliance like a microwave – kitchen design and product specification that make it as easy to prepare food in the workplace can have a significant impact on the happiness of the people who work there.
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