The Kitchen Readers Would Build: Kitchen Preference Report 2026
Report · 40-page PDF + 4 CSVs + Excel
40 kitchen polls, 5,427 answers and 497,000 photo views: the spec sheet homeowners describe, and whether it matches the kitchens they actually save.
- Instant download after checkout
- Licensed for use across your company
- Every figure reproducible from the data
What do homeowners say they want in a kitchen, and do they mean it? This report pairs 40 kitchen polls with the photos the same readers kept and passed over, so every stated preference is checked against behaviour. Where they agree, you have a spec sheet. Where they disagree, you have the finding.
Key findings
- 74.2% say the kitchen that ages best is the timeless classic; 12.5% say the current trend.
- 6.8% want open shelving instead of upper cabinets, the most rejected idea in the kitchen.
- 49.3% pick quartz counters, yet quartz kitchens are kept at about half the average rate (5.7 vs 10.8 per 1,000 views).
- 31.5% head-to-head win rate for the all-white kitchen with no wood, the only trend that fails all three tests.
What’s inside
- 40-page PDF report, 14 sections
- Keep Index for 118 kitchen attributes, ranked with 95% intervals
- Ten design trends tested three ways: what readers say, how they vote head-to-head and what they keep
- All 40 polls in full, every option and count
- Dataset: 4 CSV files plus an Excel workbook (polls, images, keep index, say-versus-keep table)
Sample and method
| Panel | Readers of homestratosphere.com, a US home-design publication |
|---|---|
| Field window | Photos: Aug 30 to Sep 20, 2026. Polls: Sep 3 to Sep 20, 2026 |
| Signals | 5,427 poll answers, 5,351 saves and hearts, 2,885 thumbs-down, 748 head-to-head picks |
| Images | 1,957 kitchen photos tagged against a fixed attribute schema |
| Format | PDF + CSV + XLSX, instant download |
Readers reacted in the normal course of reading. Nobody was told a kitchen study was running. The panel skews US and over 40; it is not a national probability sample, and the report says so wherever it matters.
Who uses this
Cabinet, countertop, fixture and appliance brands; kitchen designers and remodelers; home-builder product teams; retail buyers; journalists covering home trends.