12 Ways to Add Instant Luxury to Your Kitchen

You’ve finished breading the chicken cutlets for dinner and it’s time to wash up. But instead of smearing your potentially pathological palms on your water handles, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to tap your faucet with your arm and have water stream down? These touch-sensitive faucets are a luxury with a practical payoff: fewer germs and less mess to clean after dirty-handed recipe cleanup. And most come with manual handles still integrated, so when you want to get hands-on, that option is available.

One way to really get some wow factor in your kitchen is to splurge a bit on backsplash magic. You don’t even have to go all-over with your eye-catching tile: sometimes you get the biggest bang for your buck by choosing a flashy look and concentrating it in one focal area, like over the stove. Look for stainless steel tile, a funky mosaic or metallic tiles to really catch the eye of kitchen visitors.

Power outlets are obviously crucial for a fully-functional modern kitchen, but they’re not exactly brimming with beauty. It may not seem like a super-luxury move, but small details like relocating power outlets behind hidden panels, inside drawers, or under cabinets can really improve the overall look and flow of your kitchen design.

Done digging through drawers for that particular whisk, or picking through five-deep rows of half-inch-tall spices one-by-one? There’s a specialized pull-out for that now. In fact, there are organizers for drawers and cabinets to sort and store most anything in your kitchen or pantry area. Pots, pans, cookbooks and cans: between pull-out cabinets and drawer organizers customized for your particular kitchen quirks, you will feel like everything is at your fingertips.