I was struck by the vibrant light fixtures in many of these (traditional) kitchens. Nice, and good to think about as I ponder a new DR ceiling fixture. May be bolder.

White, white and more white..... Sad, imo.

No kidding, I'm having color withdrawal just looking through all that snowy white.

These are just saved photos and all for different reasons. I probably saved 30 million photos (maybe a slight exaggeration) when doing our kitchen. All my saved photos were of stained cabinets because that is what was mainly being done at the time but the photos were saved for reasons such as floorplan or cabinet function ideas or lighting, or wall colours or... and had nothing to do with the overall kitchen itself. The fact that these are white kitchens may have nothing to do with why they are being saved. Sure a lot of them are white and when I was doing my kitchen a lot of them were dark stained.

Good point blfenton. A lot of the pics in my Houzz account are for more random or piecemeal things, floors, lighting, ceilings, windows or flow/layout more than total kitchen *love*. In fact the very first one shown what jumped out at me was the sink windows and that they are spaced apart - unique and something different.

And to that point some that I might save as kitchen love are most likely nothing that I could even work into my space size or budget wise, lol!

This post was edited by Autumn.4 on Sun, Jan 6, 13 at 14:32

Well, I was going to post this, too! Can't understand why on earth someone would think it sad....good grief, it is just kitchens that people liked. But obviously, some people MUST like white kitchens. Anyway, I thought most were lovely and airy...and wasn't that first gorgeous kitchen with the brass lanterns over the island a GWebber's kitchen? I feel like I have seen it before...

I think the sad part is not that there are white kitchen's shown there. Many white kitchens are pretty. But that the "10 most popular kitchens" are almost exclusively white. So there's no diversity of taste reflected. From looking at the article, one would think white was the only way to go.

Sad? I'd take any of them!!

I see lots of white in mags, online and in GW,(which is why I love this site), but few in my area and I'm tired of seeing portfolios of overblown ornate wood kitchens with multiple surface treatments and enormous range hoods. Tuscan, French Chateau, castle kitchens are still alive and well here in So Cal, but need to die. Makes me wonder if KDs push them in large kitchens because the ornate cabs are more expensive or they get bored designing more simple spaces? If I see any simple ones there are usually espresso which has been done to death here for the past 10 years.

I'm attracted to the pictures of white kitchens because they are usually light filled spaces, uncluttered, with clean lines and have a simple door profile that I can picture in stained wood if so desired and as others have said the other kitchen elements are more obvious in a backdrop of white.

Maybe it's just that people who want white kitchens save more pictures to ideabooks because they need more planning and research help?

KIDDING!! I really am just kidding, honest. :-)

I do think it's simply that white kitchens are a look that appeals to a wider audience when done really well, which clearly is the case with the beautiful kitchens chosen.

OK, here's something I did one day a couple of months ago when I was procrastinating...

Went to the "most clipped" listing on GW. Clicked on each one that was a kitchen (more than half, if I remember correctly). EVERY SINGLE ONE is a white kitchen, or some variation thereof!

I love white kitchens, and it doesn't bother me at all that they're popular, but it was an eye opener that maybe I'm more influenced by the current trends than I'd thought...

Sochi, your kitchen is at the top of my list every time!!!

Why are folks surprised at "White Kitchens"?
Take a look on the freeway or even your own street or maybe even your own garage.

What colours are the cars?

Gray!!! Henry Ford is back, any color you want as long as gray, His wife returned to do our kitchens, any colour You want as long as white.

I think many of our folks have lost the Colour Rods in their eyes. Me????? I have a green a red and a blue car and a non-white kitchen, but guess what the colour the rest of the house is, both in/out cept for some trim?
(Hint) NOT!!!!! Gray

Gary

These are really mostly variants on the #1 most popular kitchen on Houzz.

It would have been more instructive for Houzz to have looked at the top 5 DIFFERENT kitchen styles.

Agreed Pal.

Thanks again for the vote enduring! My kitchen is at least partially white! ;)

What I wouldn't give for a little variety in car colours too! Or appliances. etc.

I am a fan of white kitchens....I have one. There...I'm on topic. :)

I agree with dodge59...I always notice when I at a stoplight now many cars around me are either white, gray or black.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a white kitchen hater. I found it "sad" because they all looked alike. Nothing exciting. Not one stood out. Yada yada yada.

I want to see inventive. I want to see different. I want to see some personality.... that's not a colorful bowl of lemons here and a pop of color with flowers there.

'What colours are the cars?

Gray!'

yikes! where DO you live?

I live in Yorba Linda California, (Southern Calif) but I hang around with the "Euro Crowd", hence my spelling of
Colours!

Gary

Being that designing and planning a kitchen can be so overwhelming I can see why we see so many white kitchens. It doesn't necessarily take much creativeness to do an all-white kitchen because you literally have thousands of white kitchen pictures to copy from. The white kitchen is the easiest to duplicate at this time. I do like white kitchens but the kitchens that are unique or kitchens that use colors or woods or products not often seen are the ones that really catch my eye. To me that is where all the true talent is in kitchen design and decorating.

I can understand wanting a variety of colors for an article showing latest trends, especially if it was not an article on cabinet color. Surely there were wood grain cabinets, painted cabinets and white cabinets that highlighted the "trends" Houzz was trying to point out. I love the white kitchen with the two islands and the dark wood floor. I think many people tagged that kitchen for the floor and the 2 islands as much as for the white. Or the ornate lanterns or oversized pendants that are found in many different color kitchens.

Well, another thing that can generate beaucoup page views is if those kitchens happened to get linked from a popular website. FWIW, I've been looking at kitchens sorted by Recent Activity and got as far as page 7 without seeing that first kitchen one time.

I for one prefer it over the dark stained cabinets of a few years ago. Despite lots of lighting, my SIL's kitchen is like going into a cave. Dark cabs, dark granite, dark appliances. Maybe part of the trend to white is that with the aging Baby Boomer generation, there are more than a few of us who need more light to see what the heck we are doing!

I'm definitely color-challenged. I actually flunk color-blindness tests. Most of our current house is white because my wife and I just don't do well at picking colors. For the record, our current kitchen was re-done way before the white trend, but we chose all white. Our new kitchen will be.....white.

Whatever happened to the ubiquitous cherry cabinets with black granite? I have a couple of kitchen design books from a few years back, and that's ALL they featured.

It would have been more instructive for Houzz to have looked at the top 5 DIFFERENT kitchen styles.

I am the One True Kitchen. Thou shalt have no strange kitchens before Me.

I think it would be fun if each of us did our own "top 10 on houzz". anyone up for this? it could be posted under a new title...

Well, this is kind of odd, but I've saved every single one of those kitchens, except for #10.

And, like @blfenton stated above, it wasn't for the color of the cabinets. The first one was for the wall color, another was for the double islands, another for the short bookshelves flanking the space. The banquettes, gthe storage, the natural light, and etc. Not one is in my folder because of the white cabinets. (Not that white cabinets are wrong.)

This is the first time I'm seeing #10, I believe. But I like that banquette seating so much, I'm going to add it to my Houzz folder now! :)

Most of those kitchens make me want to put a sweater on! Brrrr.

Love your idea mamadadapaige. I'm game!

Mamadadapaige,, that sounds like a fun idea!

Looks like a collection of the "gardenweb standard".

I love creamy white trim/cabinets... the white that is popular today is too white for me. The white I love is the white of old kitchens. Until somewhere around the 1950's, white paint didn't exist. They couldn't make white.

My white of choice is BM Windham Cream, which is much warmer than today's popular white kitchens.

I'm on the old side now. I've seen a lot of kitchen rages come and go. Today it is white white kitchens, fancy backsplashes, elaborate chandeliers, huge stools for islands, marble looking counter tops... those are the things that will one day say "this kitchen is out of date". That doesn't make them bad, but I think it will date the kitchens from this era.

And Gary is right about the cars. All the cars in my close by neighborhood are gray, including ours. But we inherited ours (I would never choose gray).

After reading this thread, I went to Houzz to look at a broad selection of kitchens. I ended up filtering by location and looking at the first coupld pages of kitchens from a variety of cities: Chicago, Philly, NY, Tampa, San Francisco, Phoenix. There were some common threads, but differences, too. SF seemed most dominated by the OTK. Phoenix still seemed to be living in the neo-Tuscan era. It was an instructive exercise.

I think it is kind of strange that ALL of them are white. But I think it is even stranger to assert that people who do white kitchens do so because they lack creativity. Jeesh.

Interesting cawaps, I will do the same experiment.

Crl, if you are referring to my post I did not say white kitchen people lack creativeness, that's twisting my words. I said (or meant too) that it doesn't take as much creativeness as there are so many white kitchens to copy from. I stand by that comment. For example if one were to do an exotic wood species or maybe a little used today stain color mixed with a little used today cabinet color or any other little seen combination they would have very few if any inspiration pictures to go by. It would certainly be an exercise in being creative when it all has to come from an image in your head. This is not to say white kitchen people do not fret over every decision, I am sure they do but there are hundreds and thousands of online visuals to go on :)

This post was edited by jterrilynn on Mon, Jan 7, 13 at 14:23

I respectfully disagree, jterrilynn. I think it takes a lot of creativeness to do a white kitchen well. White is difficult and vague. Online pictures mean nothing when you're standing in your own space. One man's white can look grey or blue or yellow in another man's kitchen, depending on lighting and other factors.

In college, I stayed with a well-to-do French family in Paris. I fell in love with their "classic" white cabinets, open shelving and glass front cabs, and white marble counters. It was a small kitchen, not ornate, but it just spoke to me. So that's what I drew my inspiration from in my new kitchen by picking a lot of white. That said, all my friends and family who did their kitchens 2-8 years ago did dark wood cabs with light or dark granite. I think their kitchens look great too! I just need a calm, light & airy feel, especially in a small house. And I do love creamy white like Donaleen. But the trim in the rest of our house is more of a pure white, and since I was merging the spaces I wanted continuity. And yup, gray cars everywhere here. Funny, I was just noticing that a few weeks ago! It would be fun to have some color in our cars, no?

It took my a while to find this house article, but when I saw the top ten that Sochi posted I thought it odd because I could have sworn that I recently saw a houzz top kitchen post that had alot a variety and not all white. Then I saw this post and thought I was going crazy, but sure enough at the end of december there was a link to the top 20 kitchens of 2012 and they are all different than the ten listed above:)

Here is a link that might be useful: [Houzz top 20 with many nonwhite kitchens 2012[(https://www.houzz.com/magazine/the-20-most-popular-kitchens-of-the-week-in-2012-stsetivw-vs~5855031)

This post was edited by roarah on Tue, Jan 8, 13 at 13:34

I think it's all a matter of what is being counted.

In sochi's link, it's "based on the number of times they've been added to ideabooks" and in roarah's "based on Facebook likes and Houzz bookmarks."

This post was edited by purplepansies on Tue, Jan 8, 13 at 13:18