Do you ever wonder where new building products come from? There's an enormous home building industry that gathers each year. Small startup companies along with established brands, showcase their new products to builders, remodelers and interior designers who can use these products. It's the International Building Show (IBS) which alternates between Las Vegas and Orlando.
There are more than a thousand exhibitors so you can't see everything. Here are a few of the new building products discovered at the 2022 show.
New Kitchen & Bath Cabinet Ideas
It's fun discovering new ideas, including some that may even be accidental. I stopped to photograph the bathroom display below because I liked the open shelving for towels, using cubby holes vs the wide shelving that's more typical. As I edited the photo, I discovered a lot more ideas:
- Wall cabinets in the bathroom, similar to upper kitchen cabinets. They're more practical than those ugly plate mirrors, and they provide a lot more storage than the old fashion medicine cabinet hiding behind a mirror.
- Bathroom vanity with multiple heights. Love this idea because there are lots of us who don't like the new, higher vanity cabinets (36 vs 32 inches). With dual sinks, you can no let everyone can have their preferred height … with a clear boundary between his and her counter tops, LOL.
It's also fun to open all the base cabinet drawers to discover the extra organizing ideas are hidden there. While I like the double sliding cutlery dividers below, I'm not sure they're practical because my flatware stacks higher than the top of the dividers.
When one of the manufacturer reps suggested I could install these dividers in my existing cabinets, I had to check the drawer height. As I suspected, my drawers are only 2 3/4 inches tall (read: How to Organize Kitchen Drawers) and the dividers here need a height of 3 1/2 inches.
New Building Products & CookTops
Once upon a time, your cooktop sat on top of the oven … until wall ovens became an option. Now the cooktop is disappearing as the burners get integrated into the countertop. What's fun is these new building products allow homeowners to pick any number of burners and decide where to place them. Maybe some day, we'll have his and her cook stations?
While the porcelain countertop above might look nicer than a cooktop, you're still allocating space to the burners. That's where another solution using induction technology wins because you don't dedicate any countertop space to cooking.
Want to learn more about these new kitchen cooktop choices?
- Watch this GE video that explains How Induction Cooktops Work.
- Review the pros and cons of porcelain countertops which make these new cooktops viable.
- Learn about new air purifiers like the Ozonos shown below (upper left) that can take the replace today's large, fixed vent hoods.
Kitchen Sinks More Functional
Sinks are getting bigger so there's a focus on how to make them more functional. One of the most popular new building products include the recessed gadgets for your kitchen sink. With a built-in strainer, you don't need to drag one out of a cabinet when you take pots off the stove.
New Building Products: Shower Shelves
While visiting production builder model houses, I rarely see a shelf in the master shower. It's not difficult to install them but there's a cost and risk of a leak when not installed properly. My shower is no exception so I was thrilled to discover Schluter's shelves that will fit easily into the existing grout line. They call this type of installation a retrofit (here's a video on how to install these shelves).
New Building Products from Europe
We're spending more time at home and that means we're probably collecting more stuff we need to store. The question is where to we find more space?
Using limited space more effectively is something we can learn from countries that don't have homes as big as US houses. As I walked through cabinet exhibits, I loved seeing how different manufacturers are tucking more storage into spaces typically ignored in the US. So here are some of the fun space saving ideas I saw at this year's home show.
Move Over Boring Colors
Check out other articles on IBS through the years …
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