The 2024 Esprit Meuble trade show, held in Paris, from Nov. 16 to 19, was once again an opportunity to bring together kitchen industry players in a dedicated area. Kitchen designers, retailers and manufacturers of appliances, accessories and equipment came out in force to present their new products and innovations at Esprit Cuisine. Here’s what you need to know about the major trends represented at the event, from design and style to functionality and environmental responsibility.
Vegas, Häcker
1. New Color Effects and Textures
Although white kitchens have been prevalent in interiors for many years, they had deserted the aisles of this latest Esprit Cuisine show. Manufacturers are constantly enriching their selection of colors and finishes to meet the desires of as many people as possible and put the kitchen back at the center of the home, both in terms of layout and aesthetics.
Metallic reflections. Among the new finishes seen at this year’s show were new metallic effects. Like those seen on the furniture and accessories collections at recent Maison & Objet shows, they are now making their way into kitchens. German manufacturer Häcker has unveiled its new Vegas line of cabinetry, offering four metallic shades for kitchen fronts: brown (pictured), blue, green and champagne. The color is identical inside and outside the cabinetry, for perfect unity.
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Febal Casa, Colombini Group
The Italian Colombini Group, via its Febal Casa brand, also presented at the show the textured facades of its new kitchen collection created in partnership with architect Daniel Libeskind, seen in the photo above in metallic finish. “They are deconstructed in the image of the architect’s work and play with lighting to create material effects,” said Moreno Semprini, sales director of the Febal Casa brand.
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Häcker
New textures. Kitchen cabinetry fronts also are taking on a new dimension. Wooden slats and pleated effects have been the order of the day in recent years but are now increasingly giving way to fluted fronts. As these natural woven fibers are not the easiest to use in the kitchen, some manufacturers are innovating to imitate them and fine a more resistant material. Such is the case with German kitchen manufacturer Häcker, which at this year’s show presented its new imitation fluted kitchen fronts, available in black (pictured), light and dark wood.
More generally, manufacturers are expanding and enriching their range of finishes, with ever more colors and textures, to enable kitchens to blend more seamlessly into our homes. With many of today’s kitchens opening onto living areas, it’s important to be able to match them to the rest of the room or, conversely, to make them stand out in these spaces with ever more innovative aesthetics.
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Colombini Group
2. Kitchens Blend Into the Decor
The transition to the second major trend observed this year on Esprit Cuisine is a foregone conclusion, since it concerns the integration of kitchens into our living spaces. Since the pandemic, interiors have become more convivial, with kitchens mostly integrated into the living room and treated as living spaces in their own right.
Creating harmony throughout the home. For Febal Casa’s Semprini, “having a similar finish on furniture throughout the house is increasingly in demand, while most kitchens are open plan, to create an ambience throughout the dwelling.”
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Häcker
Hiding the kitchen for better integration. The integration of kitchens into living spaces is not without its problems. One of the main criticisms leveled at open kitchens is that they leave the clutter associated with daily use of the kitchen visible from the living room. With this in mind, manufacturers are increasingly developing solutions to conceal the technical elements of kitchens. These large doors, which conceal an entire section of the kitchen, including countertops and storage, were present in large numbers in the aisles of the Esprit Cuisine show.
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Undercover cooktop from Novy, with Cosentino
Technological innovations are going even further to make the kitchen and its technical elements disappear, such as the much sought-after hoods built into cooktops that have been on the rise for several years now. So it’s impossible not to mention the new Undercover induction cooktop, developed by Novy in partnership with Cosentino. It is fully integrated under a Dekton countertop, making the three or four cooking zones completely invisible, simply identified by central dots to indicate where to position the cookware. As for the controls, they are concentrated in a wireless box.
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Hettich France
3. Optimization and Modularity Are the Watchwords
While the size of kitchens has tended to increase over the last few decades, the problem of space is still very much present, and the multiplication of their uses is prompting manufacturers to develop more and more modular solutions.
Modular. The kitchen has become a room dedicated to preparing and sharing meals, but it’s also a space for entertaining, working and spending time with family. Among the modular solutions we saw at this year’s show was Charles Réma’s Volte line, developed with furniture hardware manufacturer Hettich France. The furniture features FurnSpin technology, which enables instant transformation by rotation between closed storage and open shelving. In this way, the unit can be used as a equipment cabinet or a display area for beautiful recipe books.
Systemat, Häcker
Optimizing storage space. Space is always an issue, and the search for solutions to optimize the smallest square footage in kitchens is a major concern for manufacturers. Häcker took advantage of the show to present the new cabinet in its Systemat line. Significantly more spacious, with a depth of 24 inches, it offers extended storage space for consumers and avoids wasted areas in the center of kitchen islands, for example.
Also noteworthy is the development of contactless lighting in kitchen cabinets and cupboards, offered at all the booths visited at this year’s Esprit Cuisine.
Lhov, Elica
Multiply functions to save space. Modularity and optimization go hand in hand with multifunctionality to make the most of every square inch of our kitchens. While furniture is designed to serve both the kitchen and the living room, appliances are also innovating to combine functions and save space. One of the most convincing examples is the all-in-one cooking system from Elica Lhov, which combines cooktop, vent hood and oven in a single appliance.
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AEG, Electrolux
4. Better Eating Thanks to New Technologies
“Healthy eating is very important in France, and consumers are increasingly looking for simple, effective cooking solutions. This explains, for example, the success of air fryers on the market in recent years,” said Laurent Cours, director of research and statistics for Gifam at a conference organized at the Esprit Meuble trade show. Optimizing cooking to make it as healthy as possible, and facilitating access to fresh produce, was another issue addressed at this year’s show.
Optimized cooking. While oven functions have developed considerably over the last few years, particularly steam cooking, which has been democratized, their use is not always a matter of course for consumers, who sometimes find it hard to get away from rotating heat and 180 degrees. One of the most interesting innovations presented at the show to bridge this gap is the integration of artificial intelligence into cooking systems by household appliance manufacturer Electrolux.
Under its AEG brand, the company has unveiled the launch of what it says is the first oven to integrate AI into cooking. Available in early 2025, it will enable users to optimize the cooking parameters of recipes imported and analyzed by the tool by adding features such as steaming, and tips for optimizing energy consumption, such as not preheating the oven when possible. “We’re seeing more creativity in the kitchen, with the development of food influencers and the success of cooking shows. Customers are therefore looking for new, accessible features for their recipes. This is where AI is interesting,” said Élise Lagoutte-Degove, Electrolux’s marketing director for France.
Amo, Urban Cuisine
Fresh produce at your fingertips. While not everyone can grow their own garden, especially in urban areas, there are a growing number of solutions on the market for bringing kitchen gardens indoors. The Breton start-up Urban Cuisine, for example, presented Amo, a built-in indoor vegetable garden, with standard dimensions identical to those of an oven. Easy to install in any kitchen, it promises abundant, tasty harvests thanks to connected, autonomous technology that constantly monitors crop hygrometry, oxygen levels, humidity, temperature, ventilation and light.
Bora sink
5. Less Daily Maintenance
Ease of maintenance is another aspect increasingly taken into account by consumers when purchasing a product, and this is even truer when it comes to household appliances. Here again, manufacturers are constantly innovating to offer coatings that are even easier to clean and more resistant to wear and tear. In this field, Electrolux’s SaphirMatt cooktops stand out for their high protection against abrasion and their ease of maintenance and cleaning, requiring no detergent and leaving no fingerprints.
Bora goes even further to make kitchen maintenance easier. Its new Bora sink (pictured) incorporates a new function: at the touch of a button, water flows from all four sides of the sink to clean the sides and bottom in seconds.
Beko
6. Eco-Responsibility and Energy Savings
Of course, the question of ecology, water and energy savings also arises in kitchens. While the subject is not new, it is encouraged by changes in legislation concerning household appliances and furnishing products in general. “In 2024, two-thirds of French consumers took into account the Repairability Index of the appliances they bought for their kitchens. As a result, sales of appliances graded 8 and above (out of 10) rose by 30% in a tense environment. In 2025, the Durability Index will enter the market, integrating the Repairability Index, and 85% of consumers already say they are ready to pay more for an appliance that lasts longer,” said Gifam’s Cours, during the conference.
Water and energy consumption indicators are also a key selling point, and manufacturers are well aware of this. One example is Beko’s SaveWater technology, which reduces the water consumption of dishwashers by reusing clean water from the end of the last cycle and recycling it at the start of the next wash.
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