It is safe to say that the editors and producers at Homeworthy spend pretty much all of our time going in and out of the world’s most beautiful, interesting, and unique residences, so you can imagine how many incredible rooms we’ve seen. (Hint: We produce 600-plus episodes per year, so you can do the math to figure out the approximate number of eye-catching rooms that are living rent-free in our brains.) Today, however, we want to shine a much-deserved light on what is often considered the heart and soul of every home–no matter how small: the kitchen.
From sprawling 200-year-old homes in the English countryside to glass-walled New York City penthouses, we’ve seen just about every kind of kitchen imaginable. The kitchens, we’ve noticed, are the rooms that animate our hosts the most. So, it should come as no surprise that we’re offering our top contenders up on a digital silver platter, if you will. Ahead, explore what we consider the most beautiful kitchens in Homeworthy history. Which one is your favorite?
If Susan Roland’s design process can be summed up in only one word, it would be “specific.” Susan knew exactly what she wanted (and what she didn’t want), which made the process of decorating her St. Francisville, Louisiana, kitchen as easy as it was challenging. “Number one, I didn’t want it to look like a kitchen. Number two, I didn’t want to see a refrigerator, ever. And I didn’t want any upper cabinetry.” The result? A sky-high space outfitted with an antique-style bibliothèque to display her hundreds of dishes. “You can never have too many dishes. I tell my husband this all the time,” she adds.
What’s more, the only visible appliance is a beautiful French range. The rest, however, are cleverly hidden. There’s stainless-steel-fronted Italian cabinetry that conceals two dishwashers and a trash compactor. She also has two sinks and additional ovens hidden in the walk-in pantry.
A design dilemma always has a solution, and for Cece and Nick Bowman, that dilemma was deciding between blue and green for their West Palm Beach, Florida, home’s kitchen. “My immediate reaction was, ‘Why not both?’ So that’s why we have a green-and-blue kitchen,” explains Nick. Not only does it look warm and welcoming, but it preserves the home’s original 1950s character, when pastel hues in the kitchen were most on trend. In fact, they really leaned into the 1950s feel when it came to the renovation: Rather than gut the original space, they decided to keep its quirky original cabinetry, giving it that utilitarian feel that so many midcentury kitchens feature.
Some may argue that a kitchen without an island doesn’t really work, and Michelle Rago is definitely in that camp. Originally, she wanted to leave it out of her Lambertville, New Jersey, kitchen, but in a majority-rules situation, she lost and ended up installing quite a large one. “I didn’t really want an island, to be honest. I fought it. And of course, it’s the place where everybody hangs out,” she admits. They take a seat on the vintage 1960s stools, one of her first purchases for the kitchen.
The island helps fill out the enormous space, which is the result of converting the home’s former dining room into the kitchen’s extension. Now, she insists, the flow makes sense, and it gives her plenty of space to prep.
Marketing executive Jennifer Johnson did not want the typical white-washed kitchen that’s so popular right now. On the contrary, she opted for a dark and moody kitchen that captures New York in the past. In fact, every floor of this unique townhouse in the West Village neighborhood is inspired by various periods of New York. The kitchen, for instance, is all about Art Nouveau-era and early-20th-century New York. “I don’t think most people would think about putting this wall covering in their kitchen, but it works. And I love it,” Jennifer says.
When faced with the choice of range color, Heather Ross had two options: avocado or plum. She decided to go with the latter, and styled her entire Catskills kitchen around it. Perhaps the most interesting element of her kitchen, though, isn’t the range but the hood above it. She asked her contractor to build a simply box-like structure that could get the job done, knowing she could create a piece of art directly on it. She ended up painting the entire mural freehand using “really inexpensive acrylic paints from Walmart.” Plus, the beautifully grained counters were made from a locally fallen tree that the fabricator estimated was about 300 years old and had fallen only about 15 miles from the house. How’s that for kismet?
Washington, DC-based designer Zoë Feldman had plenty of room to run—in terms of design, not literally, as the kitchen, she admits, is “small but mighty. First, she covered the floors in a highly geometric pattern that hides everything, so spills are hardly the end of the world. She also used marble on her countertops and cuts directly on them—no cutting boards. Her goal was a French bistro-inspired space that optimized that kind of warmth and high-design. Plus, she completely opted out of upper cabinetry because, as she puts it, “It is much easier to grab a plate like this than to open a cabinet and grab a plate.”
In Orange, Australia, designer Steve Cordony was set on creating an English-style kitchen but with a more contemporary edge, which is how he landed on this high-contrast palette that’s bathed in light. In his opinion, the whole space is centered around three elements: reclaimed French oak flooring, a Ralph Lauren billiard pendant, and dramatically veined marble that peeks out from various spots, including the countertops.
While not exactly small, Erin Gates‘ Wellesley, Massachusetts, kitchen is not enormous either, so she had to get creative when it came to making it work. Her first order of business was installing storage where she could. In fact, the room has five cased openings, leaving very little usable wall space for cabinetry, so the cabinets that are there extend all the way up to the 10.5-foot ceiling. However, the driving force behind her design was the gorgeous induction range.
Véronique Susman’s Cape Town, South Africa, kitchen takes the idea of open concept to a whole new level. In the one enormous space, there’s a dining area, sizable island, cooking space, television, and fireplace sitting room. And this entire floor was designed with one element in mind: natural light. She goes so far as to say, “It’s a room that was designed to be the central living area in the home.”
Italian antique dealer Enrica Stabile‘s kitchen in Provence, France, is made extra warm with the soft yellow hue on the walls. It was one of the first changes she made upon moving in more than 20 years ago. Plus, given her long and storied career as an antiques dealer, it would make sense that almost every item in her kitchen—including the plates on the walls and tucked away in the cabinets—is centuries old.
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