How to Make Your Kitchen Unique Without Dating It

A kitchen becomes unique when it fits one household exactly, and when a few choices in it are plainly yours. It does not get there by following whatever everyone else is installing. New Yorkers know the trap: a city full of people looking for an individual style often ends up with the same white kitchen. The way out is to decide where the character goes, spend there, and keep the rest quiet.

Start with what is already yours

The most personal thing about a kitchen is how it is used. A baker’s kitchen with a marble slab and a wall of trays looks like nobody else’s because nobody else works that way. Before picking a single finish, write down how you cook and what you own that deserves to be seen: copper pans, a grandmother’s china, cookbooks, a collection of anything. A kitchen designed around those has a subject.

Cabinet doors and wood

Cabinets are most of what you see, so the door style and the material set the room’s character more than anything else. The range is wider than the showroom-floor standard. Doors can be flat slab, Shaker, inset or beaded inset, with or without glass or mullions. Wood can be oak, cherry, maple, walnut, birch, hickory or mahogany, or something rarer such as sapele, wenge or zebrawood, cut plain, quarter sawn or rift sawn. A painted finish in a color you chose and not a catalog did is another route. Because we make cabinets to order, the combination is yours to specify.

Color where it can be changed

Bold color is the fastest way to a kitchen that is not like the neighbor’s. Put it where it can be redone: painted cabinets, a wall, the inside of open shelves. A strong color in stone or tile is a longer commitment, so choose it only if you have loved it for years.

Lighting with a point of view

Dramatic lighting changes a kitchen more than its cost suggests. A pair of pendants over a counter, a picture light over open shelves or a fixture that would suit a dining room gives the room a focus. Keep plain, even task lighting under the wall cabinets so the statement piece does not have to do the work.

Tile that says something

The backsplash is a small area seen at eye level, which makes it the right place for a handmade tile, a strong pattern or an unusual stone. It is also one of the less expensive surfaces to replace if you tire of it.

One piece made to measure

A single built piece that exists in no catalog does more than a dozen accessories: a banquette fitted to a corner, a hutch that looks like furniture, a plate rack, shelving with its own lighting. Statement chairs or stools do something similar for less. Handcrafted cabinetry of this kind is our trade, and the custom cabinets and showroom page explains how to brief a cabinet maker: bring pictures, and say how each cabinet will be used.

Keep the bones calm

Uniqueness that lasts sits on a plain base. Keep the layout practical, the counters and floor restrained, and the appliances where a cook would want them. Then the personal choices read as choices, and they can change over the years without another renovation. Our piece on NYC kitchen styles by building type shows how the building itself can supply some of the character.

What the building decides

Inside a New York City apartment the finishes are yours to choose. The exterior walls and the building’s pipes and systems are not, and in a co-op or condo the alteration agreement governs how the work is done. Plan the personal touches inside those limits and nothing has to be undone.

For ideas, look through the kitchen gallery. For how a kitchen is designed and built from the first meeting, see kitchen renovation in NYC.

Questions people ask