To be a successful real estate agent, you can’t just sell homes—you have to be a trusted resource and advisor to your clients. As the market continues to intensify this year, it’s your job to help sellers understand how to best set themselves and their homes apart from competing houses in their area.

One particular area you should be helping your clients focus on is the kitchen. The kitchen gets the most attention and comments from potential buyers. It’s often the room that is easiest to fall in love…and the one that is easiest to hate.

To help your clients make the right impression and sell their homes faster, educate them on these nine kitchen trends:

1. Embrace grey and white

To create a kitchen that sells, ditch complicated, outdated color themes and opt instead for the simplicity and cleanliness associated with greys and whites. Minimalism is an increasingly popular design trend when it comes to kitchens, and should be reflected in the colors your clients ultimately use when preparing their home for staging.

White is associated with clean and bright, making this a great color to go with when thinking about cabinets, decor, kitchen furniture, etc.

Grey, on the other hand, can be a very calming and charming color. It’s a great color to use when you’re trying to create an inviting environment and centralized hub for families.

When white and grey are used as the base layer for a kitchen theme, incorporating vibrant, flavorful, and lively statement pieces into the overall design becomes a lot easier. You can see a great example in the first photo below—the green plant creates a crisp and lively focal point that effectively complements the clean and minimalistic design of the rest of the room. It’s inviting, memorable, and sure to please anyone who walks into the room for the first time.

Photo Courtesy: Lestnic

Photo Courtesy: The Inspired Room

2. Think natural

Instead of making everything in a kitchen look brand new, try going more natural. These days, buyers are looking for high-quality material that has been creatively reused and repurposed to add charm to a home. By encouraging your clients to incorporate natural-feeling elements into their kitchens, you can help them create a warm, inviting environment for potential buyers when they walk through the home for the first time. Examples of popular ‘natural’ choices include:

• Reclaimed wood for ceilings or ceiling beams, as illustrated in the first photo below.
• Edison bulb lights or industrial lighting fixtures that hang exposed from the ceiling.
• Reclaimed/repurposed wood for floors or kitchen island siding.
• Heavy butcher block counters in place of granite or marble countertops.
• Repurposed subway tiles as charming black-splash features.

By adding a few warm features like this into the kitchens of the homes you’re selling, you can add character to a home while still keeping it updated and modern.

Photo Courtesy: HGTV

Photo Courtesy: Scotch and Nonsense

3. Focus on utility

Buyers don’t just want kitchens to look nice—they want kitchens to function properly as well. When you’re working with your clients to sell their home, you need to help them find a good balance between aesthetic design and actual function. Thankfully, there are a lot of creative techniques that you can work into different parts of a kitchen that promote function without degrading the overall personality of a kitchen. 

Examples of techniques that promote functional kitchen design include:

• Hidden storage drawers that pull out for easy access, as illustrated in the first photo below.
• Built-in storage racks in pantries.
• Exposed, easily accessible glass containers that fit into the overall design of the kitchen.
• Mini center islands on wheels that can be moved around various areas of the kitchen based on need (next to the sink, next to guests, off to the side and out of the way).

A great-looking kitchen will draw attention. A great-looking kitchen that also has great function will be unforgettable.

Photo Courtesy: DecorPad

Photo Courtesy: The Kitchn

4. Get smart

We’ve talked about smart home technology on this blog before, and we’re bringing it up again for good reason: buyers want to see it in the homes they buy. Kitchens are used more often than most rooms in a house, so it’s a great place to incorporate smart technology. Here are some examples of smart technology your clients could be adding to their kitchen to up its value:

• Touch-sensor sinks, as illustrated in the graphic below.
• Amazon Echo for listening to music, getting measuring conversion help, and ordering new kitchen items.
• Smart refrigerators that connect to wi-fi and acts as a place for you to store notes, reminders, and calendar events.
• Smart lights that can be adjusted and customized from your smartphone (or vocally using that Amazon Echo you placed in the kitchen).

The world is more connected than ever, and buyers want to see the best and newest technology in the kitchens they tour.

5. Hide appliances

Appliances might have once been the focus of kitchens, but now buyers would prefer that they stay hidden. As an agent, you can help advise your clients on the best way to keep appliances accessible without acting as eyesores when viewed within the design of the kitchen as a whole.

The most popular way to do this is to cover the front-facing planes of appliances and less desirable aspects of the kitchen (like garbage and recycling) with the same material you use for cabinets. It’s an intentional, forward-thinking way to effectively blend your appliances into the look and feel of a kitchen. Remember: for kitchens, cleaner is better. Minimal is preferred. Open space is a must. 

You can incorporate appliances into existing areas of your kitchen, as illustrated in the second photo below. In this example, refrigerators are built into the center island, and stainless steel is used to blend the two together to create one cohesive area.

Photo Courtesy: High-End Custom Cabinetry by Ken Leech

Photo Courtesy: Succor

6. Mix hardware finishes

In the past, mixing hardware finishes might have been considered a no-no, but times have changed. Buyers want more charm in their kitchens. They want designs and features that spark conversations and make them feel at home. To really make a kitchen stand out, consider asking your client to swap out their traditional silver-colored sink faucet with a gold-colored one instead. It’s a small change, but noticeable and memorable to those who walk into the room for the first time. You can also mix hardware finishes on your cabinets and lighting fixtures, as illustrated in the second photo below. 

Photo Courtesy: K Sarah Designs

Photo Courtesy: House Beautiful

7. Create more space

As mentioned throughout this post, buyers want space. Even if you’re working with a client who doesn’t necessarily have a large kitchen, you can still create the illusion of space and open up the room by exposing shelves and cupboards. Rather than keeping serving ware, plates, and bowls hidden behind suffocating doors, consider encouraging your clients to replace their traditional cupboards with open-concept ones. At first thought, you might think that this small change would make a kitchen look messy or cluttered—but it can actually lend to the warmth and character of a kitchen. 

Photo Courtesy: House Beautiful

Photo Courtesy: House Beautiful