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Beautiful Contemporary Kitchen Design Styles Explained

A modern kitchen with dark cabinetry, white quartz countertops, stainless steel appliances, a large island with seating, tile backsplash, and hardwood flooring.

What Is A Contemporary Design Style?

Contemporary kitchen design styles are ever evolving as it is shaped by whatever culture, fashion and lifestyle trends are current at the time. While often mistaken for the modern design style, contemporary design distinguishes itself by blending elements of eras such as industrial, and global styles like Art Deco and Scandinavian, thus reflecting what is currently fashionable. So what does this look like, and how do you know what selections to make to create this style?

Check out our other styles: Transitional | Modern | Rustic | Traditional

Decorative Elements

The goal for contemporary kitchens are to create a clean appearance. You can achieve this with full overlay shaker, recessed panel or slab doors with a shaker crown molding. What does this mean? In the below photo, you can compare cabinet door styles. The overlay is the correlation of your cabinet doors to the cabinet face frames. In addition to the design features of your selections, you can add cutting-edge technology such as fully integrated appliances with touch controls play to a minimalist, high-tech vibe. Incorporating touches of texture with subtle hints of metals and organic materials in light fixtures, floating shelves, and seating keeps a contemporary kitchen trendy.

Infographic showing contemporary decorative elements including shaker crown molding, natural wood floating shelves, cabinet door styles (shaker, recessed, and slab), ceiling fixtures, and wooden hardware pulls.

Countertops

When selecting countertops for your contemporary kitchen design, choose quartz countertops with light or thin veining. Quartz, as well as granite can be installed because of the sleek, clean, high-end look of the material. To compliment the clean look of the countertop, select an edge profile that has straight lines. An example of this is an eased edge as shown below. Additionally, add a waterfall end to your counter to accomplish this sleek contemporary style.

Backsplashes

If using a veined countertop, as shown above, consider using the same material in a 1cm thickness as the backsplash and have the veins book matched. If you like the look of subway tile, try the longer format tiles in a 3×12 or 3×16. Have them installed in a horizontal stack with thin grout lines for a streamlined look. If you would like a little more of your personality to shine through you can add glass tiles, mosaics, stone, and ceramic. Though the contemporary design style is focused on clean, bright, light, and neutral tones, don’t be afraid to add a little bit of color in the backsplash if that’s trendy or more your style.

An annotated comparison image showing kitchen and bathroom remodel materials and design features, including subway tile backsplash, quartz countertop with waterfall edge, and light veining details.

Colors

Contemporary kitchen designs focus heavily on soothing monochromatics with warmer undertones such as warm whites and “greige”, a combination of warm gray and beige. Currently painted cabinets are predominant; however, it’s not uncommon to incorporate both painted and stained cabinets to bring natural warmth to the room. If you want to incorporate bold colors to fit your personal style, adding elements such as a decorative vase or other pops of color in your decor can accentuate the trendy feel of a contemporary kitchen.

A color palette showing seven paint swatches ranging from light beige to dark navy blue, labeled as contemporary paints with warm undertones, displaying various neutral and muted tones arranged in two rows.

Classification

Warm, Inviting, Open, Uncluttered, Streamlined

Does this stand out as your next kitchen remodel design? Check out an example of a recently completed, Roscoe Illinois kitchen remodel. We love the contrast in colors for this project, while the backsplash brings it all together with a sleek and clean design. This is a great example of selecting colors that fit your style and current trends, while still maintaining the clean and minimalistic style of a contemporary kitchen design.