Modern Contemporary

Clean lines, no clutter, every surface on display. Here is how to get a modern kitchen that reads as flawless from across an open room.

Loft conversions, new-construction, and the glass towers along the lake. We design to the way a modern kitchen actually lives, on display and seen from everywhere, across Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

The home with nothing to hide behind

The modern home is the one that took everything away. Where the older Chicago styles decorate with profiles, trim, and millwork, the modern and contemporary home decorates with line, light, and material, and almost nothing else. Clean horizontal planes. Minimal ornament. Open plans that let one space flow into the next instead of carving the floor into rooms. And glass, a lot of it, big windows and full walls of glazing that pull the city or the light straight inside. This is the home that earns its beauty from proportion and restraint, not from detail, which means there is nowhere for a weak surface to hide.

In Chicago the modern home shows up in three main ways, and they share a sensibility even when they look different. There is the gut-renovated timber-and-brick loft conversion, the old warehouse or factory floor opened up into one big light-filled volume, where exposed brick and heavy timber posts meet a crisp, minimal kitchen. There is the new-construction infill home, the modern box dropped onto a city lot, all clean stucco or dark brick, floor-to-ceiling windows, and an open main level. And there is the luxury condo and the high-rise tower, the glass-walled unit up in the sky with a lake or skyline view and a kitchen built to be as sleek as the address. Across all three, the architecture is doing the same thing, stripping away the ornament so the space, the light, and the material can carry the room. Understanding that is the entire key to the kitchen, because in a modern home the kitchen is rarely tucked away. It is part of the architecture, in the open, seen from everywhere, and held to the same clean standard as every other surface in the room.

What is usually going on in a modern kitchen

A modern kitchen is built on a short list of moves, and once you see them you see them everywhere.

The cabinetry is almost always frameless, the European or Euro-style construction, where the doors and drawer fronts sit flush across the face with no frame showing and only the thinnest reveal between them. The fronts are flat slabs, smooth, straight, and unbroken, no panel, no profile, nothing raised. The look is frequently handleless, either a true push-to-open front or a long integrated channel routed into the edge so there is no hardware at all, and where there is hardware it is the most minimal linear pull, a slim bar set flush to the line. Appliances are often integrated, panel-fronted to disappear into the run so the eye reads one continuous, calm surface instead of a wall of stainless. And the island frequently becomes the sculpture of the room, sometimes a waterfall, where the countertop turns the corner and runs straight down the sides to the floor in one clean fall.

Then there is the palette, and it is tight on purpose. Walnut, white, and black do most of the work, in low-sheen and matte finishes that absorb light instead of bouncing it. Very often the kitchen is two-tone, the single most recognizable modern move, a warm wood island set against a matte perimeter, or a dark base under a lighter wall run, so the room gets depth and warmth without ever getting busy. And nearly all of it is open to the living space and visible from everywhere, part of the main room rather than a separate kitchen behind a wall.

All of which sets the brief, and it is a demanding one. The kitchen has to be clean, calm, flat, and continuous, with seamless fronts, a quiet matte or low sheen, and a palette held to a few warm and grounded tones. But because the whole thing is on display in an open plan, in good light, seen from the sofa and the dining table and the front door, there is nowhere to hide a flaw. In a modern kitchen the finish quality is not a detail. It is the entire job.

How we'd approach it

The modern home points to one of two paths, and which one depends on the doors you already have. Either way, the standard is the same: a finish flawless enough to stand in the open.

Refacing, into Flat Panel, if the fronts are wrong. If your modern kitchen has good boxes but the doors fight the look, dated raised-panel or shaker fronts in a space that wants to be sleek, refacing is the cleanest possible answer. We keep your good bones and replace the doors and drawer fronts with brand-new ones, and in a modern or contemporary home the choice is clear: Flat Panel, modern, sleek, and straight, no frame, no profile, just a smooth flat face. This is one of the few home styles where Flat Panel is unequivocally the right door, the front the whole aesthetic was built around. We can take a kitchen with the wrong profile and hand it back genuinely frameless in feel, flat, continuous, and calm. And as always, we finish everything in-house, your boxes included, so the new fronts and the kept boxes read as one seamless, unbroken kitchen instead of a patchwork.

A flawless sprayed painted finish, if the fronts are already flat. If your modern kitchen already has flat slab fronts and they are sound, the move is not to replace them, it is to make them perfect. This is exactly where our painting work earns its name. We encapsulate the kitchen, build our coats very thin and in multiple passes, and spray a finish with no brush marks, no texture, and no break in the surface, the factory-smooth, sprayed result a modern kitchen demands. On a flat slab front there is nothing to distract the eye, which means every imperfection would show, so there can be none. That is the standard we hold, and on a modern kitchen on full display it is the whole point.

The two-tone move: a walnut island against a white perimeter. This is the signature modern pairing, and it is one we love. We are doing a lot of warm wood right now, and a contemporary home is exactly where it lands, a warm walnut or white-oak island that lets the grain carry the center of the room, set against a clean white or grey perimeter that keeps everything calm around it. It is the "marriage of" two tones that gives a minimal kitchen depth and warmth without ever crowding it. You can run a single tone throughout if you want the purest read, but the two-tone island move is the one that makes a modern kitchen feel designed rather than just plain.

Handleless, or the most minimal linear pull. Hardware is where a modern kitchen quietly succeeds or fails. The look wants to be handleless where it can be, a push-to-open front or an integrated edge channel, and where you do want a pull, the slimmest linear bar set flush to the line, nothing ornate, nothing that breaks the surface. We will help you choose hardware that disappears into the design the way the look intends, and we can add soft-close hinges and slides so the clean, handle-free face still opens and closes like it should.

Clean, continuous, and flawless in the open. That is a modern kitchen built to the same standard as every other surface in the room.

Where Chicagoland's modern homes live

The modern and contemporary home is a city story first, and it clusters where the new building has been happening. West Loop and Fulton Market are the heart of it, the old meatpacking and warehouse district now full of gut-renovated timber-and-brick loft conversions and brand-new glass residential towers, where a clean, frameless kitchen on an open floor is close to the default. River North carries the same energy a few blocks east, a dense neighborhood of converted lofts and contemporary high-rises where sleek, minimal kitchens are the norm. You will also find a steady stream of modern new-build infill in Bucktown and Lincoln Park, where contemporary boxes keep landing on classic city lots beside the older greystones and frames. And up along the lake, Streeterville and the Gold Coast high-rises hold the luxury-tower version of the look, glass-walled condos with skyline and water views and kitchens built to match the address. Wherever the loft was opened up, the tower went up, or the modern box went in, this is the kitchen inside.

We know these homes, the restraint that defines them, and the one thing a modern kitchen cannot do without, a finish clean enough to stand in the open and be seen from everywhere.