5 kitchen design trends for 2012

4. LED lighting

Energy-efficiency is clearly not a fad, but a real trend that can be seen taking hold in homes across the United States and Canada. Despite the higher initial cost, light-emitting diode, or LED, lighting is proof of this trend. Specified by 50 percent of NKBA member kitchen designers entering 2010, that rate increased to 54 percent the following year and has jumped over the past year to 70 percent. However, compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) aren’t sharing in this trend. Although they use roughly a quarter the energy of an incandescent bulb when producing the same amount of light, measured in lumens, the poor color of the light they produce and the presence of mercury in these bulbs are keeping them out of newly remodeled kitchens, falling from 36 percent last year to 26 percent today, according to NKBA.

Older incandescent bulbs stand at just 42 percent, a figure we expect to fall next year due in part to the U.S. ban on newly produced 100-watt incandescent bulbs that went into effect on Jan. 1. A ban on 75-watt incandescent bulbs will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, followed by 60- and 40-watt incandescent bulbs on Jan. 1, 2014.

Source: NKBA         Photo: Lutron/courtesy of NKBA