This fascinating Cover Story sees renowned surface brand Caesarstone discuss what consumers are expecting to see in a show house kitchen and the importance of offering quality finishes.
Over the last ten years or so, there has been nothing short of an explosion of consumer interest in homes, architecture and design. And in the last two years in particular, for many people, the ‘home’ has become everything and the nature of it has taken on new meaning.
Academics debate the nuances of ‘home’, how it relates to our primal instincts and sense of safety and security. Home is our personal space, protection from the world outside and as far as global pandemics go, our sanctuary.
And once we’ve got our home and the fundamentals are covered – warmth, security, utilities – we want to make it our own, put our stamp on it, surrounding ourselves with colours and materials of our own choosing. These provide inner comfort as well as acting as signals of status and preference to anyone else entering our space.
Thanks to modern media, perhaps now, more than ever before, our sphere of influence in how we create our spaces seems infinite. If you are taking on a renovation project, or looking at various show suites, then it’s a simple matter to find inspiring interiors and designs from around the world, all online and within a very short space of time.
Buyers can satisfy their interior design ‘fix’ through multiple channels whether this be through the plethora of TV shows, design magazines, blogs, or more recently, podcasts and social media channels such as Instagram or TikTok. This means that consumers are now incredibly knowledgeable, well informed and often highly opinionated about what they want from their next move or future home. As a result, show suites need to work much harder to grab their potential purchasers’ attention and persuade them of the quality and design prowess of their development. They need to appeal to current trends and purchaser aspirations to ensure quick emotional buying and future sales.
Within the show home, the kitchen is the most essential room for housebuilders to get right. It is the heart of the home but also the most complex room to get right. Industry surveys regularly show that, of all the rooms in your show suite, the kitchen is the one most likely to tip the balance when it comes to signing an agreement.
Moreover, the importance of the kitchen has further increased with the pandemic. For many people, it became the centre of everyday life, turning into a multi-functional space. Alongside cooking and eating, it became somewhere to work, educate, entertain the family and pursue one’s hobbies. It was both social and functional and needed to move from one task seamlessly to another. Contemporary expectations required it to look stunning and, at the same time, be easy to live with.
Read more of this article in our new edition: April 2022 Single Issue – Show Home Magazine (yourshow-home.com)
Media contact
Roshini Bains,
Editor, Showhome Magazine
Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922
Email: [email protected]
