Southern Living Releases 2021 Kitchen Design Trends To Delight And Terrify

We here at The Takeout have this tendency to stare unblinking at fancy kitchens until our eyeballs withdraw back into their sockets like little ocular prunes. A fancy kitchen means possibilities—like, if I only had that $6,000 Miele gas range, my risotto would come out perfect time and time again. A fancy kitchen also means affluence, which is something we journalistic plebeians will never know. This is all to say that we're suckers for kitchen trends. That's how we stumbled upon something very curious indeed: Southern Living's December 2020 roundup of the kitchen trends that Southern designers say "will be everywhere in 2021."

The list starts off reasonably enough. According to Southern Living, homeowners are clamoring for accoutrements like funky accent lighting and durable materials like stain-resistant quartz, which is more heavy-duty than marble and granite. Also on the docket are creative storage solutions and pops of color, especially in shades of army green or mint (Dakota Johnson's influence continues).

Then, things take a sudden turn. First, Southern Living's experts suggest adorning your kitchen with "gorgeous noir and black shades" in a quasi-Marilyn Manson effect. Not only is a dark kitchen kind of a bummer to walk into, it's also a glaring showcase for crumbs, bits of flour, and anything else that contrasts with ultra-dark surfaces. The experts also note that more and more home cooks are applying TEXTURED PLASTER to their kitchen walls, which might seem like a good idea until you're trying to scrub tomato sauce out of a series of tiny wall holes.

I don't know. Whole thing seems fishy. See for yourself: you can check out the full list of kitchen trends here.