Our kitchens are full of secrets these days. Don’t want your range hood to stick out like a sore thumb? Shroud it in tile or plaster. Knobs not gelling with the color of your cabinets? Paint them the same color so they basically disappear. Can’t be bothered with touching the sink faucet? Swap it out for a discreet foot pedal instead. Designers continue to come up with clever ways to make our kitchens seem, well, less kitchen-y. And, of course, there’s one thing they love to hide no matter the project: the refrigerator.
It’s rare that we see a shiny metal refrigerator parked in the middle of a kitchen anymore. The pros have been using custom panels to their advantage so that the appliance seamlessly blends in with the rest of the cabinetry. Usually, the door size and handle configuration give away its location, but overall they’ve become less of an eyesore. The custom touch is an extra splurge that certainly costs a lot more than a bottle of stainless steel cleaner, but it’s one designers keep on opting for because it makes all the difference—here’s proof.
Swathe It in Fabric
You don’t often see soft details in a kitchen aside from the occasional café curtain or dining banquette. Jessica Jubelirer is out to change that. In this space, she swathed the double-door refrigerators in a painterly blue-checked fabric—the same textile she used to line the kitchen cabinets so that the whole space appears cohesive.
Top It Off With Squiggly Handles
There’s a lot to love about this butter yellow kitchen, but designer Sarah Sherman Samuel notes she’s partial to the custom refrigerator cabinet that her dad made for the paneled fridge. The sculptural handles (you could get the look with these similar wavy ones from Curated Spaces) add some much-needed character to superflat, matte refrigerator doors, as does the arched trim piece at the top of the fridge box.
Make It Easy to Grab Onto
Wanting to give everything in this New York kitchen a refined look, James Veal and Christine Stucker, the cofounders of design firm Stewart-Schäfer, built the new cabinetry out of water-based white rift oak. They kept the minimalist look going by adding bulky oak-wood pulls everywhere, even to the refrigerator. “They’re very ergonomic,” says Veal. The elongated handles on the tall cabinet doors help break up the monotony of all the wood and make the ceiling appear a bit higher than it is.
Match It With Old-School Cabinets
This grandma-chic Tudor home in Toronto kicked the nostalgia up a notch with slatted cabinet doors, a nod to designs of the past that featured similar openings for airflow. The refrigerator panels got the same treatment and same paint color (Yukon Sky by Benjamin Moore), plus functional slots above for baking sheets and cutting boards.
Hide It Behind a Huge Hit of Color
Worried all that opening and closing will damage the panel? For this space, Marge Architects used durable Valchromat, a wood fiber in which the paint color is bonded with a resin to make the front moisture resistant and extremely durable. It was finished with handles from Roctor DC’s collection of reclaimed and salvaged hardware.
Go All the Way in a Galley
If any type of kitchen layout calls for a paneled refrigerator, it’s a galley. By hiding the refrigerator doors and freezer drawer behind painted fronts, Edgar Bové, the founder of architecture and interior design studio Re-Shape Development, made this tiny space feel bigger and brighter without expanding the room at all.