Woman’s Guide speaks to Nairuz Gherfal, a luxury residential interior design expert and food blogger who is currently heading the marketing for Quooker UAE to explore what the future of the kitchen holds.
SMART KITCHENS: What will your kitchen look like in 20 years?
Here’s a peek into the future.
The future kitchen is tech-driven, sustainable, and engineered for user convenience. Shaped to meet the needs of busy consumers, the future kitchen exhibits smart technology that can save on time, cost, and energy. Whether one’s personal design aesthetic leans towards modern, classic, retro, or even eclectic design, one thing we can all agree on is opting for new technology. Someone may want to create a kitchen that resembles kitchens from the 1950s, but nobody will want the appliances used in the 1950s in their kitchen years from now. The future of kitchens lies in the future of kitchen appliances.
Tech Drive: Smart refrigerators, interactive cooking surfaces and multi-function kitchen taps
The future kitchen will exhibit more tech integration. From smart refrigerators that can keep tabs on your grocery list, to interactive cooking surfaces that can suggest recipes based on the grocery and time you have – kitchens will only be getting smarter.
Quooker, the world’s first boiling water tap, is already leading the way with a tap that can dispense 100°C boiling, cold, chilled still and chilled sparkling water directly from one tap, all of which is filtered. Thanks to Quooker – kettles, water dispensers and plastic water bottles will be a thing of the past in the future kitchen.
The Future Kitchen Entails Clean lines in Design and Products engineered for Mobility
The future kitchen entails clean lines that allow for easier navigation
There is no denying that the future of the kitchen is clean. Consumers are already moving towards favoring appliances that marry aesthetics with function, serve multiple purposes and help rid their kitchens of any element that may be identified as clutter. In the future, every item in the kitchen will have more than just one function in order to justify its presence. Clutter is reduced so consumers can easily navigate the kitchen and get things done in a quick manner.
The future kitchen with engineer products for durability
20 years from now, we expect that there will be more pressure on brands to develop products that are engineered for long-term durability. A cheap fix may keep a customer happy for a month or two, but a durable appliance will buy him convenience and peace of mind – something we will all need more of as our lives become faster paced in the future.
This change will also accompany a shift in mindset as consumers will begin to seek out and invest in durable appliances, and rather than label them as “expensive”, will begin to consider their cost per use as a decision making factor. If, for example, you use your coffee machine twice a day, and this coffee machine is made to last you 10 years, you can be certain that your cost-per-use is far lower than that of buying coffee from a nearby coffee shop every day. In the future, more consumers will want to buy the right product from the get-go.
Catering to a generation of nomads
Because the new generation is a generation of nomads, they seek change and move a lot, whether that be in the context of location, job, or lifestyle. If they are going to invest in a smart appliance for their kitchen, they will seek an appliance that they can carry with them to their next home.
A great example of a movable smart appliance is a Quooker. A Quooker can be uninstalled and reinstalled in one’s next home, and the home after that – making it a convenient choice for the future generation. We’ve covered all the deets about Quooker’s products and the installation process here.
More energy efficient and sustainable solutions
Today, we are already seeing heavier focus on energy savings. On almost every project we complete, our clients ask that we submit a Carbon Footprint Calculations Report, which shows how much their carbon footprint has decreased after having installed their Quooker. In the future, consumers will only be getting more aware of the impact their actions have on the environment.
With that said, we expect more consumers to rid their kitchens of any tool that does not allow them to lead a sustainable lifestyle. Examples of this include kettles, water dispensers and plastic water bottles. With a kettle, you would usually heat more water than is necessary, to only re-heat it again a couple of minutes later when opting for a new coffee. This results in wastage in water and electricity!
Without a Quooker on standby to provide you with filtered drinkable water on the spot, you are also accustomed to buy plastic water bottles weekly for your consumption needs – which means unnecessary plastic wastage. This goes to show that with a Quooker on stand-by, you are indeed helping the environment in more ways than one.
Apart from saving on energy and plastic, we also expect that saving on water will be on consumers’ radars. Growing up, our parents always warned us to close the water tap when we were not using it but many of us still fail to do so to this day. With the introduction of boiling water taps, the bad habit of wasting water is slowly diminishing.
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