The Kitchen Is Not the Room a Great House Cuts Corners In

A new survey of twenty-five designer kitchens, drawn from the archives, makes the same case about each one: a kitchen can carry the daily work of a house and still read as a considered room, not a utility closet dressed up for photographs. None of the examples on the list treats function and formality as a trade-off — the two are made to hold together. It is a short accounting, but a telling one, and it matches how the best American houses already treat every other room: as worth the same care, not less.

With reporting from Elle Decor.