No More Boxy Kitchen Hoods: Range Hoods to Suit Every Kitchen Style!

August 2, 2023

Category: Tips & Tricks

When our principal Devon Tobin first started designing—about 15 years ago—the trend in luxury kitchen design was to orient the space around The Hood. You know the look: The kitchen hood was such a visual anchor with its steely, boxy existence that designers had to figure out how to balance the room with the other large-scale appliances.

But over the last few years, we’ve seen a movement away from the hood as the central focal point in the kitchen. More recently, we’ve been working with architects to integrate the hood the same way we integrate appliances into the cabinet walls. The driving question for designers of luxury residential kitchens has become: How does the kitchen become a space that’s well-balanced visually rather than one marked by a heavy focal point or two?

For us, it’s a welcome question: We love a room where there’s no single visual anchor but instead, there’s a sense of equilibrium that gives you a lot to observe and discover!

So today, we’re embracing ideas that enable us to integrate the range hood into the kitchen’s overall design. As designers, we benefit from the evolution of technology that allows us to properly ventilate the kitchen without needing oversized pieces of equipment—so we get to have some fun! Here, a few projects we’re glad to share to help drive your kitchen-hood inspiration.

Sleek & Sculptural Range Hood

For this Colorado Springs–area home, which is defined by a warm, contemporary style, Devon opted for a gorgeous custom kitchen hood that almost looks like a piece of art. Its earthy grain against the beautiful marble veining of the single-slab backsplash strikes the kind of visual balance we love to achieve!

Simply Handsome Range Hood

While wrapping the kitchen hood in cabinetry is a popular option, we hid this range insert inside a bespoke walnut-wrapped hood to give the upper cabinets a vibrant contrast—and lovely visual tie-in to the island. Textural without being fussy, this Lowry kitchen proves you can infuse a small-ish space with a lot of style.

A Hidden Range Hood

This Boulder kitchen has a relatively small footprint, which gave us an opportunity to use a few high-quality materials to great effect: The kitchen hood, hidden behind a panel identical to the cabinetry and outlined with stone-wrapped trim, allows the narrowly edited palette to shine.

Western-Inspired Range Hood

For this renovated 7,000-square-foot cabin outside of Steamboat Springs, the original copper kitchen hood balances the heft of the beams and the vertical space above the second island. (Who doesn’t love the double-island look?) The hood’s patina evokes the kind of rugged good looks of the space’s other elements—leather, granite, wood—to nod to luxury in Colorado’s high country.

Maybe you’ve got your own kitchen renovation in the works, and if you’re looking for a designer who cares about every detail—down to how best to integrate the ventilation above the range into the overall style of your home—we’d love to chat with you.