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For years we’ve watched designer and TV personality Sarah Richardson work her magic on big box cabinets. Now the ball is in our court.
Through a collaboration with North American cabinet manufacturer Allstyle Retrofit, Richardson has created 20 exclusive door profile options engineered to fit onto IKEA’s modular cabinetry systems for kitchens, baths and closets.
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Available in 14 “tried, tested and true” signature Sarah colours, with a range of contemporary textures and patterns to choose from, the collection aims to make it easier than ever to achieve a custom cabinet look within an affordable budget.
“We really played in the sandbox to try and think up fun, innovative ideas and things that are currently not out there,” said Richardson, adding that her inspiration came from the “massive interest” she was seeing in textured wall panels.
“I was thinking, ‘What if I wanted to do that for a kitchen? Where could I get that?’ Nowhere,” she said. “The world doesn’t need another shaker door with my name on it … anything I did needed to be entirely different.”
The resulting collaboration is a contemporary set of door designs featuring fluted, scalloped and grooved faces, diamond-shaped mirrored fronts and circular reeded glass inserts, available in a palette of muted greys, blues and greens with a soft blush thrown in as well.
There’s also a ventilated design, ideal for mudroom closets or pantries; a door boasting a carved semi-circle motif, well suited to modern, oversized half-moon hardware; and, an understated panel that uses a three-inch vertical band etched in the centre to create a subtle tent stripe effect.
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Once your IKEA layout is planned, you upload your design to the Allstyle Retrofit website to make your personalized door profile choices, adding made-to-order finishing details such as custom gables and panels, floating shelves, vent hoods and dovetail drawer boxes as needed.
If you love a specific cabinet profile but have a different colour in mind, you can choose your own shade from any major paint brand. It’s also possible to mix doors from the Sarah Richardson collection with traditional shaker or slab doors provided by Allstyle Retrofit.
“You can mix and match any combination of elements together which makes it fun and flexible,” said Richardson, noting that her design focus always considers flexibility, adaptability and practicality.
Though the kitchen is the main inspiration for the new cabinetry, Richardson encourages DIYers and home design enthusiasts to think about all of the places where storage is required in a home, from play rooms and home offices to laundry areas and walk-in closets. One of her all-time favourite design ‘cheats’ is to take cabinets intended for above a refrigerator and float them on a wall, turning them into banquette seating or a sleek media console, for example.
“Wherever you need storage, think about how you’re planning it now and how it might work in the future,” she said. “Create the layout that works for what you need, then pick your door, pick your colour and voilà! It’s a completely custom, totally you solution.”
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