When working on this kitchen, we wanted to design something that would stand out while still appealing to a wide range of buyers.

Since this space is from a spec home, our team’s challenge was to make sure we created something that felt special and relatively neutral.

We’ve always been fans of light and bright kitchens, but sometimes contrasting that white, open-concept look with dark bold finishes makes all the difference.

In this kitchen, we did this by pairing white surrounds with dark countertops, a dark island, and even dark stools. If you’ve read our post on choosing stools, you know we don’t typically pair one-toned dark stools with dark islands, but we broke the rules here, and we couldn’t be happier with the result.

The black and white pendants were the perfect piece to tie in the color palette here. We used them in a recent, more modern kitchen design, and even though this is an entirely different style of kitchen, they work just as well.

When it came to the hood design, we did a more industrial shape with a smooth white look to soften it. Flanked with floating shelves in the same wood tone we used throughout the home; everything tied together.