Minimalist Kitchen Hoods

Minimalist kitchen hoods keep things sleek and square over the range.

Modern kitchen designers usually favor minimalist kitchen hoods even above pro-style ranges. The minimalist aesthetic, however, tends to favor flush, integrated appliances and zero-radius (square edge) features – including box-style ventilation hoods. That way, the air extractor does its job but blends into the overall kitchen instead of becoming a decorative or even a design feature on its own.

A very cool concrete and basalt Australian kitchen by Robert Mills [top] has a galley arrangement along one wall. As a result, the hood above the cooktop reads like a continuous vertical slab with the range guard. There is a projection for the hood, of course, but visually little difference. In essence, the blower is encased in a plain box and meant to disappear into the wall. That way, the hood area becomes a  counter weight to the bulk of the refrigerator cabinet.

Lately I’m seeing modern residential kitchens designed in the style of public spaces, sometimes with what I will diplomatically call “quirky” lighting. Las Vegas designer Mark Tracy of Chemical Spaces pushed that idea in a hipster house cum art-gallery, built principally for entertaining. The kitchen features classic Scavolini slab-front cabinets in a concrete gray finish with stainless steel frames – art gallery neutral. Vegas being Vegas there is no lack of glitz, as evidenced in the blue LED lighting and tone-on-tone striped Italian tile floors. The island box hood has no detailing and is painted out. It’s there but nothing more — which is exactly the point.

Here’s a contemporary hood with an extra helping of personality. The look is sleek and spare but the shiny surface and placement as a focal point transforms it into a piece of sculpture. When I first looked at this photo I did a double-take. I know the hood is mounted above the cooktop and yet because of its placement it almost appears to float in the center of the room.

An open kitchen in a contemporary Minnesota farmhouse features a sweeping eating bar that also contains the cooktop. Overhead, the steel-frame, frosted glass box encloses the ventilation unit – another sculptural solution. The frosted glass helps the hood hover above the cooking surface more gracefully than a solid box and a bit more decoratively in a kitchen embellished only by its surfaces and shapes.

(Source: robertmills, contemporist, michaelrichman, murphy&co)

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