The Heart of the Home: Kitchen Interior Design Style

When you’re inspired by interior design, it can be hard not to get swept up in every potential project out there. Whether it’s creating a tranquil bathroom, emulating the design of a boutique hotel, installing built-in cabinetry, or extending your living space with an outdoor oasis, options for well-designed home improvement are limitless. Deciding where to put your focus, whether it’s on a new build, a significant renovation, or simply an updated room can be overwhelming.

If you’re wondering where to start, consider this: the kitchen is said to be the most important room in a house. Often referred to as “the heart of the home,” kitchens are where families congregate—to eat, cook, touch base, open mail, and even do homework. With busy and conflicting schedules for many households, the time we get to spend with our loved ones feels particularly precious, so cultivating a space for those interactions—whether it’s sipping coffee, baking cookies, entertaining friends, or diving into dinner—adds heart and soul to any home.

For Dot and daughter Samantha Taccarino, kitchens aren’t just where they gather—kitchens are the bread and butter of Asbury Kitchen & Bath Gallery, an interior design company founded by Dot in 1996. While you may have some ideas about the way you want your kitchen to look, not everyone is versed in kitchen logistics—electric, plumbing, appliances, along with practicality and function—making a kitchen remodel a tough project to handle without an expert. Here, we’ll focus on advice from the pros on design elements that can help you achieve the kitchen of your dreams.

Trends in Kitchen Design

We’ve all been caught up in a trend at some point in our lives, whether it was bread baking during COVID, the strange fidget spinner craze around 2017, or the insanely over-tweezed eyebrows of the 90s. While any trend can wreak havoc, when it is wrapped up in something expensive—think a new kitchen—it can be detrimental, especially if you’re ever in the resell market.

“We don’t do things that are too trendy because those things are going to come and go,” says Dot. “You want a kitchen to have some longevity.”

And though they are in the business of new kitchens, longevity is the name of the game at Asbury Kitchen & Bath Gallery. Case in point: prior to our interview, Dot returned from a consultation with a previous client who wanted a new kitchen. The client’s previous kitchen, designed in 1999 by Dot, is still a timeless and functional kitchen.

“It’s beautiful,” Dot says. “But just not what she wants at this point in time. It was a beautiful cherry kitchen and now it’s going to be a beautiful white.”

Rather than follow trends, at Asbury Kitchen & Bath Gallery, the focus is on long-lasting, high-functioning, continuously beautiful kitchens that stand the test of time. That doesn’t mean old-fashioned or stodgy though; instead, think redefined and timeless classics with cleaner, straighter lines and fewer embellishments like applied moldings.

“When you start adding things to a cabinet—the raised panels, the distressing, the glazing—as opposed to taking away and sort of stripping it down, it kind of makes it feel fussy,” says Sam. “And then you get sick of it because there’s just a lot going on. There’s too much. Especially after what we went through with the pandemic, we want to go home and have some more simplicity.”

“But what about color?”

While Pantone colors can be extraordinary, eye-catching, and tons of fun, adding color to your kitchen—particularly in permanent fixtures like cabinetry, tile, and flooring—should be done with care. However, there are some colors that are ideal for our coastal communities.

“White and blue and yellow, and maybe a little bit of aqua have never been out of style here,” says Dot. “Back 25, even 30 years ago, I was doing blue, white, and aqua kitchens. Suddenly, everyone is talking about those colors, but it’s been ‘in’ down here for years. White and blue and aqua and sea colors will never go out of style at the shore because that’s why we’re here. We’re here because of the ocean, because of the blue, because of the sand. And we want to take that beach and bring it into the house.”

Likewise, people at the shore seem to be moving away from cool gray tones to warmer, beige grays that are more transitional and easier to pair with other colors, particularly the blues, navies, and aquas so prominent in our area.

What about those swoon-worthy Pantone colors like Very Peri, Tangerine Tango, or Emerald that you’ve been dying to include somewhere? Before you choose to place a major emphasis on a bold color, think about how long you plan to stay in your home.

“We sell our houses a lot down here,” says Dot. “So I always say to people, unless you really love it and you don’t care, and it’s going to be your forever home, consider that this might not be your permanent home.”

“If you’re going to sell, put the bright colors and more of the strong colors into the removable things,” says Sam. “Not into the permanent things.”

“I need an addition to my kitchen before the remodel.”

As someone who’s constantly thinking she needs an addition, this writer hears you. However, as lay people—not kitchen designers—we may be missing something other than extra space. “We have a lot of people who come in and think they need more space,” says Dot. “But that isn’t always the case.”

“With her experience, she can tell you that no, you don’t need more space,” says Sam of her mother. “You just need a better design. You need a better layout.” Visualizing a new layout is something that stymies even the most adventurous home designer, which is why kitchen design—more than any other room—benefits from a professional designer.

“When you’re looking at a kitchen, you’re going to look at a work center. You’re going to look at where the sink is, where the cooktop or oven is, where the refrigerator is,” says Dot. “You want to be able to have landing zones. You want to make the kitchen more functional and avoid things like blind spaces, things that you can’t get to. You don’t want to have to get down on your hands and knees to get the blender out.”

It’s all about beautiful functionality. While Dot and Sam often deal with entire kitchen reconfigurations in which they rely on their plumbing, contracting, and electrical skills, sometimes, it’s just about making a few little moves that make the whole kitchen more functional. If someone dines out every night, they likely don’t need a Wolf range. Likewise, people with dogs might require things like built-in water and food bowls.

“How do I get started?”

Asbury Kitchen & Bath Gallery works with plenty of repeat clients and referrals, all of whom are afforded personalized attention and a premium experience. Clients usually kick things off by stopping in the showroom or calling to request an appointment. From there, the most important part of the process occurs: either Dot, Sam, or co-worker Rebecca Holden will head out for the initial kitchen consultation, giving them a feel for the entire home rather than just the kitchen. From there, a CAD design will be created well before the discussion moves into color and door styles.

Asbury Kitchen & Bath Gallery is with their clients from start to finish, helping to select tiles, wall finishes like nickel gap or board and batten, kitchen hardware, under-cabinet lighting, room flow, countertop materials, and even UV drawer lights.

“We go with our clients,” says Dot. “We help them pick out everything from the tile to the color on the walls, everything. Whatever it is, it all has to go together.”

With the right guidance, the heart of your home will beat for a long time.