Somewhere in the mid-1990s, the wealthy began sheathing their kitchens in shiny stainless steel and glimmering granite, transforming cooking rooms from warm workplaces to gleaming, blinding salons.
“Affix your sunglasses, guests,” a hostess might have announced at the beginning of a 1999 dinner party in Aspen. “We are entering the kitchen.”
Soon, everybody wanted an incandescent kitchen, and now kitchens shimmer from Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood to Pueblo to Brighton to … the 2006 Denver Parade of Homes.
But the leak of luster from the castle to the village has depressed the swells. The aristocrats are jettisoning that dazzling sheen. Glossy is so 2001. Matte is today.
“The granites are becoming honed and leathered, slates are coming in from Italy or Brazil prefinished, and it’s not shiny, it’s dull,” says Denver interior designer Bev Adams. “It complements the minimalist look in contemporary, and it suits the Old World. … Everybody is sick of polished stone.”
So in addition to shine-free granite, they’re turning to glass, concrete, woods like African mahogany and metals like zinc and copper. Pewter countertops, Adams says, may be the next big thing, but the extremely expensive material will likely be complemented with other surfaces. She recently quoted a customer $52,000 for a 13-by-5-foot counter.
They didn’t go with pewter.
The decline of shine applies to kitchen and bathroom hardware too, says Kim Fancher, an interior designer in Frisco.
“The one thing that is becoming more mainstream is the oil-rubbed bronze finish,” she says. “It’s a dark finish.” And while the oil-rubbed bronze already is working its way down to the masses, the affluent are clamoring for antiqued copper for their faucets and handles.
“I don’t see it a lot, but five or six years ago you didn’t see oil-rubbed bronze, and now it’s all over the place,” she says.
Oak floors? Sure. But the high-end is gunning for darker woods now, like walnut and hickory, says Fancher, and they’re also using the woods for old-school crown molding.
She’s also seeing more cork flooring. Denver interior designer Kristi Dinner’s high-end clients, too, increasingly call for cork and bamboo floors, as well as veteran surfaces like terrazzo tiles. For basements, kitchens, mud rooms and laundry rooms, people are using marmoleum, a natural product made out of linseed oil.
The call for cork and bamboo, among other things, speaks to what may be the newest upscale must-have – going green.
“I am having more people savvy about Built Green methods and approaches,” says Fancher. “It’s a little more expensive up front, but over the long term it’s more beneficial.”
And if not Built Green, at least Appearing Green, says Scott Dittman with Equity Custom Homes, which erected one of the Parade of Homes houses.
Faux copper – a treated-steel product – clad all manner of surfaces in the house. They custom-sawed the walnut floors to leave mill marks on the wood, and to make the planks random widths. Faux stones covered walls.
“The natural look,” he says, “is becoming more popular in higher-end houses.”
Staff writer Douglas Brown can be reached at 303-820-1395, or djbrown@denverpost.com.
The next high-end luxury
It’s not just flat finishes that the patricians have seized.
The next aristocractic-luxury-to-the-rest-of-us could be front-loading washing machines, those expensive contraptions that are standard in much of Europe but only recently began gathering interest in the U.S. Their benefits:
1. They are especially gentle with clothes.
2. They double as entertainment centers. You can observe your clothes while they wash. Beats “Fear Factor” reruns any day.
3. They are energy-efficient.
The machines are installed in every house in this year’s Parade of Homes at Reunion in Commerce City. One mansion had several of them.
The front-loading washing machine now is a given among the plutocrats, but it’s not exclusive to them anymore. Want one? Sears now carries a bunch.
