The popularity of floating shelves among homeowners, particularly within kitchens, is on the rise and it is easy to see why. A simple but impactful way to introduce an accent color, new texture or material within a space, floating shelves can create focal areas within the overall cabinet layout while creating a modern, clean aesthetic to display treasured items.

“Homeowners often use open or floating shelving for decorative purposes, but they also offer a great solution for organizing items in highly functional ways,” says Stephanie Pierce, director of design and trends at MasterBrand Cabinets. “Floating Shelves are a great complement for high-use items like spices, oils or even glassware and plates. If you have regular-use items, open shelving can be very convenient – especially when used in tandem with cabinets.”

Highly versatile, floating shelves can be used anywhere throughout the home, not just the kitchen. Bathrooms, bars, laundry rooms and living rooms can all be enhanced by adding open shelving to create a space that reflects the homeowner’s personal style. The perfect mix of practical and sophisticated, floating shelves can infuse the personality of the homeowner and provide a way to display hobbies, such as cookbooks and accessories for the home chef, or cocktail tools for the budding mixologist. 

MasterBrand Cabinets provide on-trend cabinetry options in a wide variety of brands, colors and styles to spark ideas with designers and consumers of all different tastes. To view all available colors and styles, visit masterbrand.com/get-started.

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Current trends support the built in style or a freestanding hood that does not attach to the cabinetry next to it, but wood hoods over a metal appliance tend to blend better into the landscape of the other cabinetry and look more integrated with the kitchen. Minimizing the impact of metal appliances in the space also makes it easier to mix alternative metals that are popular like champagne, gold and matte black.

We recommend dressing up your range hood to mimic other complimentary tones in the cabinetry. This can be matched and stylized or is can be minimal but accented with using a pop of color or a change in species.

The associated images show how easy it is to alter the kitchen’s overall style by swapping out only one feature, the hood. Every designer will have their own process, but the range and sink are the first two areas I always start with in my designs and then, the rest of the space just seems to fall into place. Depending on the overall style, I like to use the hood as the primary design feature and really let it be the heart of the kitchen. I may even pull out design aesthetics from the hood and add them into the details of an island or a feature sink cabinet. The flexibility of hood configurations also work great for minimal designs, when the style is more modern, I may instead blend the hood into the rest of the cabinetry in the space, as if it doesn’t even exist. You can’t go wrong when you make sure the range hood looks and feels like the finishing touch.

Below are a few of my favorite ways to style a range hood.

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