A Neutral Kitchen With Plenty of Zip
A contemporary new kitchen gets pewter-colored cabinets accented by leopard-print bar stools and dark pendants.
Who lives here: A family of four
Location: Markham, Ontario
Size: 235 square feet (21.8 square meters)
Designer: Soda Pop Design
The backstory: The homeowners reached out to designer Cynthia Soda because they were building a house and didn’t love the blueprint for the kitchen. As designed, the room was U-shaped, and the sink stood on the wall that now contains the large window. Also, the kitchen had a much smaller island. “Going this route let us put in a bigger window and a bigger island, and allowed for more counter space on either side of the stove,” Soda says.
The style: The owners didn’t want an all-white kitchen — by far the most popular color for kitchen cabinets these days. “They were willing to explore. They picked a pewter color” for both the cabinets and the countertops, Soda says. They wanted their kitchen to feel clean and contemporary, and were open to the leopard-print fabric the designer suggested for the back of the bar stools.
Darker tones in accent pieces, like the pendants and bar stools, to “help the space pop and give it a little more personality,” she says. “There isn’t much color, but there’s still that visual texture.” The glass in the uppermost cabinets helps break up the pewter, and the deeper floor color provides contrast with the neutral cabinetry and countertop.
The top wall shown in this floor plan is the window wall, which as the plans were originally drafted also would have contained cabinetry and the sink.
The cooktop stands apart from the double ovens and microwave, a preference of the clients, who are frequent cooks. Separating them means that one person can work at the stove while another pulls a pan from the oven, without getting in each other’s way.
