The dust has settled and the design community hordes have moved on - HL hears Blum's top ten trends from the kitchen furniture section of the design fair.

With over 330,000 visitors perusing 150 brands across 35,000 square metres of exhibition space, Eurocucina is Europe’s only major kitchen furniture trade fair and thus is an event of global significance for the sector. 

The kitchen has evolved to become a central point of modern living. Ever more spacious, well-planned and full of technology, it must weather an endless roster of cooking and cleaning, make these tasks as simple as possible, and look good while it does so.

As such it is no surprise that so much design innovation was presented at the Milan trade fair, making ingenious use of materials, finishes layouts and hinges to rationalise movement and workflow.

“EuroCucina was very inspirational. I was pleased to see Australian designers and manufacturers are very current and aligned to the world’s most influential designers and kitchen manufacture’s”, said David Noakes, Blum Director – Sales and Marketing. “There weren’t many differences in function. However softer lines and curves complimented the natural visual impact of wood grains and neutrals.”

Top Ten EuroCucina Trends:

• Curves and soft lines seem to be reappearing in many of the designs.
• The majority of fronts and panels were painted, closely followed by wood grains and natural timbers.
• Acrylic solid surfaces.
• Lift systems like AVENTOS in overhead cabinets most with an electrical opening support systems such as SERVO-DRIVE.
• Wide range of internal lighting in cabinets.
• Stainless steel. Either as 12mm bench tops or subtly incorporated into the kitchen design.
• Individualisation of products to personalise kitchen designs such as TANDEMBOX intivo for personalised drawer sides.
• Distressed kitchen materials with a vintage effect. In particular knotted oak.
• Internal storage solutions.
• Environmentally-friendly materials such as Giuseppe Bavuso’s “Icon” for Ernesto Meda, in which surfaces are covered with ‘iconconcrete’, a material which looks like cement.

Blum