I am completely biased. The in-law unit in our house came with a Broan hood, and it was just an annoying noise maker. It never really sucked any air. When I took it off the wall to replace it with a basic (~$800) proper hood, I discovered the Broan simply had a single tiny fan. Looked very much like the case fan in my computer. No wonder it never did anything useful. This is not to say that Broan doesn't make good hoods. It's possible they do. But the experience with this low-end hood completely soured me on the idea of ever buying any Broan product again. I just took a quick look on homedepot.com, and it looks as if the same crappy hood is still being sold 15 years later. There is absolutely no excuse for that. You might not need all the bells-and-whistles that a high-end hood provides. But you should have at least some of the features that make a hood effective and make maintenance/cleaning OK: baffles are much easier to clean than a wire mesh filter and bafflesdon't clog. That's a big deal, as a clogged filter makes the hood pretty damn useless. depending on the size of your range and the power of its burners, you need to calculate accurate CFM. You asked for "high CFM". That probably sets a lower limit of about 600 CFM and could conceivably be much higher. If you tell us more about your range, I am sure somebody here can come up with a good recommended CFM. depending on local building codes and depending on how "holey" your house is, you might need to budget for a make-up-air system. ideally, a hood should fully overlap all burners with a little extra space on the sides. This can make designing the cabinets more complicated and it can also force you to install the hood very high above the burners, as it would otherwise obstruct your view. Of course, height means you need stronger airflow to be effective. So, some people opt for shorter (back-to-front) hoods that can then be mounted a little lower. even a hood that nominally is 1000 CFM might not get anywhere close to this throughput, depending on how you routed your ducts. Straight short runs in big-diameter ducts are of course ideal, where possible. peak CFM is important when stir frying at high heat. But quite frequently, you need a lot less power. It's nice if the blower can be adjusted in a continuous fashion with a dimmer-style knob instead of having only a small number of discreet power levels. noise is potentially a big factor in your decision (also known as: don't get an entry-level Broan). Remote blowers are great to deal with this, but they are also pricey and pose challenges to how they can be installed in available space. good lighting can make a big difference. I personally strongly prefer bright LED lights. But you also often see halogen lights. After much searching, we decided to get a ModernAire hood. They seem to address most of our needs. But they most definitely won't fit a $500 budget. For our in-law unit, we bought a Pacific hood. They had a local dealer, were reasonably priced, noise level is OK'ish, and they are really powerful for the price. They don't have a baffle model, but instead used a spinning cage mechanism (I think). But their self-cleaning function works pretty well. You do have to run it very regularly though.

Thank you for the suggestion. I was thinking a throw and maybe 2 small square - one furry and the other?

I think you house is beautiful. For me, the first thing I noticed is it is very.... Even. One thing under the TV, 3 items on each side. Then two more on the wall on each side of the fireplace. I think you should put something unexpected in the room.. give it some more of your personality! Maybe remove the teal pillows and put in a dash of color nobody would expect! (Orange? Purple? of course the color should be in the same hue to match). Lovely house.

Yes, the bench looks awkward. Flip it with the hall table and then use the 5 pillows you have now. Put the stripe lumbar right in the middle; 5 is a good number. Once the table is between the two floor lamps, put chairs a foot or so in front of it, but have the chairs facing out to the hall. Keep the floors lamps there. Put the leather sofa in the bay with the black coffee table in front of it. Buy a long black and white lumbar pillow for the sofa, a rug, a floor lamp and add your plant into the vignette. Like this arrangement: