Did you know that things like the popular colors and trends for anything from bedspreads to trendy hoodie sweatshirts are planned years in advance? If you look around at department stores, or even stores like Walmart or Target and notice that everybody seems to be selling similar stuff all the time with similar colors--you’re not wrong--they totally are. They plan up to ten years in advance to determine which colors will be popular so they have plenty of time for all the manufacturers to have time to dye all the fabrics and get pigments for paints for the walls and furniture to be these specific colors.

The same thing applies even to kitchen and home design. They knew years ago that the trends around this time would be mid-century modern with tons of plants and macramé everything so they were able to get all this stuff ready for us all to be consumers of tons of fake plants and macramé hanging pots with white kitchen cupboards. When I was a teenager about 20 years ago in the early 2000’s it was all the rage to have red kitchen walls and plenty of warm deep colors like reds and yellows. The look they were going for then was to have your kitchen feel like a rustic, cozy Italian villa. And who could forget the iconic color trend in kitchens in the 70’s with avocado colored kitchen appliances? Epic! I find it so fascinating to learn that this is all very intentional and “the man” picks what is popular and we just follow somehow.

Well, “the man” thinks that everything is good and well and planned out until a global pandemic hits and not even future kitchen trends can escape the effects of a global pandemic, unfortunately. I was reading an article about how the pandemic and everyone quarantining for so long changed the way new homes are being constructed in some pretty big ways. People that are building these days and designing their homes for how they actually live instead of how they think they might live. 

1. Giant pantries are back.

Now as people are building homes they are requesting huge pantries off the side of the kitchen because people now see the value of stocking up with a few months’ emergency preparedness supplies and having a good place to store it all. Even besides having a place for all of your canned goods and 6 giant rolls of toilet paper from Costco, it also makes sense in a non pandemic-related way to have a place right off the kitchen to store bigger small kitchen appliances like pressure cookers, air fryers and gourmet coffee makers.

In some cases, builders say that some of these pantries are practically as big as the kitchen and have a sink built right in so you can practically prep and make entire meals in your pantry to keep the mess from the kitchen and keep it looking spotless.

2. Let there be kitchens galore!

Not only are people wanting to build additional kitchens in places like basements, with everything but the stove, they are even building little mini kitchens in the master  suite. Having someone having to quarantine inside their bedroom for two weeks and have people bring every meal and drink really influenced things now to the point where people are requesting to have at least a kitchen sink in their master bedroom to be able to take care of some basics in making food or drinks. This can also come in handy for people to be able to make cocktails and such in their master bedrooms.

3. Upper cabinets are disappearing.

Something that many families did during the pandemic is get into minimalism and clear out tons of their stuff from their house that they don’t love or need. Therefore, people are loving the look of floating shelves instead of upper cabinets to display beautiful, simple matching dishes that are easy to grab. They are also opting for organized lower cabinets with plenty of pull out drawers for kids to be able to store and easily reach and grab their own dishes to use. 

4. Breakfast nooks instead of dining rooms. 

When builders ask families who are building a home where they actually eat meals instead of where they think they’ll eat meals--most say at a kitchen counter or around the island or something. People are more and more requesting big breakfast nooks with comfy benches to be added to their home right in the kitchen, rather than formal dining rooms that rarely get used for that purpose.

5. Open layouts might become less open.

Most homes designed the last decade at least have a very open floor plan with the kitchen open to the whole rest of the house, but that might be a thing of the past in the near future. People had to figure out how to try and hold a business meeting in the living room, while others are eating dinner in the kitchen. It is hard to control noise and hear conversations with lots of people in the house with this open of a layout. They suspect people might be wanting there to be a little bit more distance between the kitchen and the rest of the house for happier homeowners overall.

If you were to build a house right now and got to design your kitchen, do you think there are things you might do differently than you might have two years ago because of the influence of the pandemic in your world? People these days are designing how they actually live instead of how they think they will live--since we all got a very big dose of how we actually live. Pretty interesting to think about :) Also, just for fun--what is one of your favorite kitchen trends or color palettes that you thought was particularly fun in history? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.