2024 Kitchen Trends Are All About Breaking Rules—Here Are 4 Tips Courtesy of Ashley Park’s Refresh

This is the year you break out of your metal box and embrace the joy that comes with a carefully curated color palette. Our advice? Lean into whatever will make you the happiest. It’s time to look beyond the stainless steel. Park agrees, telling us, “With my old appliances, they were mostly stainless steel, and it felt very uninviting. I really wanted a space that felt very approachable and relaxed, so when I saw these appliances, this Matte White finish, I realized that the appliances are how I can tie the whole kitchen together.”

The CAFÉ suite of Matte White appliances offers an elegant, personalized look that makes your kitchen feel, well, way more custom. Just picture the professional range against cabinets in your favorite color for a serious color-pop moment, or hiding in plain sight against white cabinets like Park’s to let the interchangeable hardware shine (we’re absolutely loving the Brushed Brass).

Forget everything you ever learned about kitchen finishes, because these days, even your appliances can have hardware in your favorite metallic hue. Consider Park’s approach: “I’ve been drawn to a neutral palette with bold and striking accents, so I was excited to choose the brass hardware—there’s something about it that felt really sophisticated.” The customizable CAFÉ appliances come with six (!!) hardware choices: Brushed Bronze, Brushed Stainless, Brushed Copper, Brushed Black, Brushed Brass and Flat Black that you can pair with any one of the three base options (Matte White, Matte Black and Stainless Steel). And you don’t have to stick with your first choice—you can even swap them out later for a brand-new look. For an even more unique vibe, take it a step further and mix the metals you use for your faucet, drawer pulls and cabinet handles. The key is making sure they feel like they’re complementing each other—not fighting.

When it comes to the kitchen, the best kind of customization lies in what’s behind the scenes. So while refreshing your space, think about what you actually use, how you use it, and what would make your life easier. Don’t settle for cookie-cutter storage and function. Instead, find ways to take it to the next level—like this super-stylish dishwasher, which comes with completely customizable racks for safely washing your favorite items that may have required hand washing in the past (think: tall vases, wine glasses, tumblers, lids and straws). “I love that it’s easy to put wine glasses in, water tumblers, huge pots, little pots. It feels like a safe place for my dishes,” says Park.

The fridge is another often overlooked spot, but make sure the new one serves your purposes too. Customizable temperatures throughout mean you can store everything from wine to meat and snacks to beverages: “I am obsessed with the customizable drawer of this refrigerator. Mostly because I am a condiment queen and a skincare fiend, so my drawer currently is filled with all face masks and condiments,” Park explains.

Tucking away your coffee maker? Not on our watch. Not on Park’s, either. See how effortlessly it integrates into her kitchen design style? That was a very specific choice to bring her everyday, function-heavy favorites to the forefront where they can not only be easily accessed, but admired, too. Yet another example of how important it is to have a space that’s the most aesthetically pleasing and the most customized to you and your personality—because when it comes to your kitchen, you can absolutely have your cake and eat it too. Or your espresso. Or your condiments.