Kitchens gleaming with fresh, modern, glass surfaces … walls and cabinets so tough and easy to clean that splashed tomato sauce and red wine will never leave a stain … installation that’s quick and simple with ordinary carpentry tools …
Glass Cooks Up Creative Kitchen Design Possibilities
Glass Cooks Up Creative Kitchen Design
That’s the affordable, practical vision many architects and designers are bringing to life by encasing traditional kitchen surfaces in glass.
Tile, stainless steel, wood, acrylic, and painted drywall have long been the main materials at kitchen designers’ disposal. If glass did enter the picture, it was in the form of heavy blocks or fragile cabinet panes.
Those restrictions are now shattering.
Remarkable glass as thin as 200 microns — about the same as a sheet of paper — has become the ideal kitchen laminate, forming a tough, super-sheer cover to rigid design materials. Its optical clarity lets the foundation material shine through while greatly enhancing the surface properties.
Take stainless steel, for example. For all its beauty and contemporary appeal, steel is a ductile material — so it scratches. Add a very thin layer of glass on top of it, and you maintain that professional-grade appearance with a much more scratch-resistant surface.
Even better, the glass is so thin that it adds virtually no bulk to the original material. Workers can precisely cut the laminate right at the job site. This eliminates the need for pre-cut factory pieces that might not fit the angles, outlet holes, or other specifications of the room.
This super-slim glass is well-suited to mid-height applications on kitchen and bath walls, like backsplashes and upper cabinetry.
As for laminates below counters and on kick plates, designers are turning to the glass cover material found on popular smartphones and mobile devices.
The same glass properties that protect your phone from fumbled drops and keys in your pocket can also protect the kitchen surfaces most likely to be bumped with feet, brooms, or tricycles.
Different glass formulas for different durability needs — all creating one gleaming, unified, floor-to-ceiling look that will last for many years to come.
Corning® Willow® Glass and Corning® Gorilla® Glass are two of the products being used by kitchen designers in applications like these.
