At Six Walls we thrive on keeping current on emerging trends for the most lived in spaces of the home; the kitchen and the bathroom. Visiting the KBIS (Kitchen & Bath Industry Show), North America’s largest trade show dedicated to all aspects of kitchen and bath design, is one of the highlights of our design year. Owned by the not-for-profit trade association National Kitchen & Bath Association (NKBA), it showcases the latest industry products, trends and technologies, including smart home and outdoor living products.
What we saw
Standout themes from this year’s show were connectivity, color, and mixed metal finishes. It seemed like every vendor found a way to integrate connectivity in a way that makes everyday tasks more convenient and streamlined. Check out the Kohler Konnect Smart Home, which is available as a control pad in the bath or kitchen and as an app on your smart phone.
Kohler Konnect
It works with Alexa and Google and allows you to control mirrors, toilets, bathtubs and showering experiences all through your voice and is customizable to your preferences. Kohler Konnect reaches the kitchen as well with several faucets and water filters available with the feature. Connectivity like this not only elevates everyday experiences in one’s own home, it opens up a huge opportunity for living in place if restricted by age, disability or injury. The AI component also learns from the users’ behavior, and can recommend settings to reduce energy consumption and decrease power while away from home.
Brace yourself for the high impact of COLOR! So many opportunities for customization with color, no longer restricted to just cabinetry and countertops, colorful choices are now abundant in appliances! Take a look at the image at the top of this post, showing a bold Saffron yellow on the appliances from True Residential, a luxury home refrigeration brand with commercial DNA. Or feast your eyes on the color explosion below from Dacor, offering a range that can match almost any color for your kitchen appliances!
Dacor’s new Pink Appliance color!
Mixing metal has been a coming trend for a while, but now it has really hit big time. Take a look at the new Collezione Metalli by italian manufacturer Bertazzoni, which offers combinations of different metals for knobs and appliance.
The new Collezione Metalli offers decorative details finished in real metals to enhance your Heritage Series range, hood, dishwasher or refrigerator from the control knobs to the finials on the door handles.
Some other fun and functional designs that caught our eyes…
Unique in the market, the Spoke Door Knob by Emtek made its debut at KBIS
Colorful hand basins in unique patterns add to any bathroom design.
Best of KBIS
There is also a “Best of KBIS” award, that highlights innovative products at the show, sometimes shown even before market release! Judged by renowned industry professionals, the goal is to reward designs that combine beauty, convenience and ease in innovative ways, across different categories. We will be presenting the winners in future blog posts, together with our ideas on how to integrate some of the latest trends into your projects. For now, we’ll just tease you with the grand winner, the Kintsu Bath Collection by Brizo. Tranquil contours reflect elegant Scandinavian minimalism, while natural materials and broken geometries channel Japanese wabi-sabi philosophy in this thoroughly luxurious range, which can be tailored with different materials and finishes.
Kintsu Collection by BRIZO
Finally, we couldn’t resist showing you Plum, the winner of the kitchen category. It’s a truly unique wine dispenser, which automatically identifies the vintage, varietal, region, winery and wine of the inserted bottles. Two silent cooling chambers are automatically set to the perfect serving temperature for each varietal. We have one on display in the studio! We’ll invite you come by for a demo and a glass—at happy hour of course & after the coronavirus COVID-19 has passed…
Plum, a unique wine dispenser
Six Walls NKBA connections
On our team, both Jennifer Kowalski and Diane Troutman are honored to hold board positions with the local chapter of NKBA, providing them unique training opportunities and insights through solid vendor relationships and industry partners. This benefits our clients in so many ways; from finding the best fit for a client’s need or introducing the hottest “must have” in the industry! We’re excited to bring you more from this fantastic show in future blog posts, please stand by for updates!