SS has been going out of fashion for at least 10 years.

BTW Linky no worky.

Fortunately, someone else posted the link a couple weeks ago. No criticism for your post - it bears repeating. I do like SS, but this is very pretty, too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Is SS going out?

Opps, thought it was a brand new subject since I was not on GW for a couple of weeks. Should have known they'd be "in the know" before me! ;)

Once a finish or material becomes affordable for too large a swath of the population, it goes out of style.

Why? Because otherwise marketeers wouldn't have their most prized leverage over people's wallets! So long as people choose colors and finishes based largely on what they think they need in order to be acceptable in the eyes of other people, people will be at the mercy of marketing.

And the job of marketing is, "To separate our customers from their money."

So, yep, stainless steel is OUT! If you want to be worthy of human companionship or be allowed to merge into highway traffic then you must sell or donate your appliances and buy NEW ones this instant. And while you are at it, get rid of your dated granite counters and tacky wood cabinets (for other materials that are more in fashion).

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Perhaps I'm being a cranky, crotchety old woman (with my mismatched appliances) but for the love of Pete can someone please have a positive outlook on this crap we are being fed? Why can't someone start a thread saying, "Hey, look! There is another option for appliances now, yay for having more choices!". Why does it have to be all about, "This is OUT!" and "Top 10 choices that make your kitchen look dated" or "This is how I know you're poor, your kitchen has one of these 5 characteristics of a builder basic kitchen."

You know what's always in style? Accepting others, showing humility, and having pet fur in little tumbleweeds on the floor. Those are the little black dress of home design, IMHO

I am glad to see that white appliances are making a come back, but what color cabinets will become popular to use with them?

I need suggestions very quickly! So far, I am clueless what to put in my new build kitchen.

Engineer: I second that.

phoggie: What do you like? Everything goes with white.

Love your opinion Engineer chic. My title was tongue in cheek. Although I am happy, and relieved that I won't feel badly about losing resale value if I don't do the SS thing. I've just always thought it looked like the kitchens I waitressed in in High School. I'm all about doing what you love and can afford. So far, I know what I love, it's the affording what I love part that has me progressing at a snails pace.

BTW, my kitchen has a bit of Corgi fur in it. She's a tri-color Corgi, so her fur matches perfectly!

This is Koko, she has a lot of fur, but she goes with our kichen. Why mess with perfection?

Well, the thing is, EngineerChic, is that there's a fairly long thread on Decorating where half the posters are arguing that stainless is the mark of "upscale." Once you choose or defend a material in your house on the basis of social status, then you're putting yourself at risk to be trumped and pwned. If you put it in your house only because you like it, then nobody gets the upper hand.

Sanjuangirl - I love your dog, Coco looks like she gets those fur-tufties when she blows her coat. Those are so much fun to pull out (for me, some dogs aren't fond of it).

Marcolo - yeah, I should avoid that thread. I admit,I get cantankerous when I read too much about what we all NEED in order to make our lives livable. Someday I wish marketing wasn't so much in love with the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) and focused more on actually improving lives ... While still being respectful of the choice to NOT buy.

But I know that's unrealistic. Maybe if I win the lottery I'll take over HGTV for a day and show nothing but, "Third World Kitchens" and "Bathrooms of the bottom 5%". And I'll add some voiceovers from HH complaining that the kitchen doesn't have granite or stainless steel appliances for fun ;)

I can see that type of finish replacing SS. I think what makes a kitchen finish in or out is easy maintenance. Glass cooktops replaced coils. Granite replaced grouted tile. Quartz is popular because it requires no care. SS replaced white porcelain sinks; now there's Silgranite.

By the time all our new SS appliances die in 10-15 years, maybe we'll all be tired of cleaning it. It's fun to polish when it's brand new, but it will probably be a chore in 5 years. Other manufacturers will have copied the new finish, so there'll be more choices in quality and perhaps colors.

SS is a neutral...white can pop out too much in a small kitchen unless the whole kitchen is white[not all folks want to do that]...black can work but it's usually quite shiny and can take over if all appliances are done in black. SS is just another option.Cleaning is not that much of an issue...they have EZ clean surfaces now. Keep a goal of the overall look and pick within that parameter. More important is the fact in replacing appliances you'll get more efficiency and energy savings making your kitchen and life better.

A lot of puffery.

The lightly textured surfaces showed up to try and hide fingerprints from glossy smooth surfaces.

Know they are going back.

Marketing at its best.

I must be one of the few that still likes stainless and has an entire kitchen full of it. I didn't buy it because everyone else has it or because it's "in". I bought it because I like it. I don't find it any harder to take care of than white or the beige/bisque that was in my old apartment. Now if budget was no option, I would've bought brightly colored appliances- like a blue range or green dishwasher, something fun, but that's my preference and it's probably not popular and I don't really care. LOL We don't all have massive kitchens with unlimited budgets. There are beautiful kitchens with big budgets and beautiful kitchens that are put together with limited funds. As long as you buy what you like and can pay the bill without selling a kidney, does it really matter that some unknown person on the Internet says gold granite dates a house or white appliances are out? Get what you like because they're not living in your house - you are.

I think just about anything (I said "about") can be made to look nice if it's all functional, in harmony with the rest; if there's an aesthetic that's internally consistent with itself and the owner and its use... these are (some of) the components that make a kitchen work, regardless of designer-designated, neighbor-designated or otherwise, accoutrements.

Case in point: I've always "hated" SS, I thought. Well, that's maybe too strong a word -- if I think about it, which I don't, I "hate" it. I thought it was kind of stupid and pretentious; a home kitchen is not a commercial one. And so when I went out and bought a refrigerator, I bought a white one. It was the cheapest. When I got home, proud of my decisiveness (CEFreeman is my hero: 'decisive' is not one of my virtues), dh freaked out. He was obviously deeply rattled and upset. This was clashing with some image of his. I don't even know what drove that image, I suspect it was something like: we're-spending-all-this-money-because-my-wife-loves-to-cook-and-I-want-to-give-her-a-modern-kitchen-and-this-is-what-a-modern-kitchen-is. i.e., I suspect his reasoning was market-driven and manipulated in no small part. However ... I don't care. I don't really care about that aspect of it, nowhere near as much as he clearly did. So I got back in the car and humbled myself in front of the salesman and asked to change the order to the more expensive, SS.

It just wasn't an argument I wanted to fight; I don't care, really. But the point I'm trying to make is, I conceive of all these "decisions" as, in cases where multiple people are involved in producing a finished kitchen, a long, long series of negotiations. And not toward one RIGHT answer; things can be jiggered and replayed in various contexts. I don't like SS but I was happy to give in this regard because I figured we could make it all work out in this different direction, and given that it mattered, seemingly, so much to someone else, it was 'free' for me to give in. On that.

Thus ... I'm trying to say, I don't think it matters whether you "like" SS, it is one element of a myriad of them that get shuffled about in the long, long course of so many decisions and so much compromise. It is one variable up for grabs but it doesn't, at least not necessarily, have to be absolute.

FWIW it turns out that "SS" has been modified considerably. The stuff they provide, at least on my refrigerator, as "SS" is coated and less shiny-industrial in look. It does not get fingerprinted at every minute brush-by, and it is somehow more demure than a massive, commercial SS fridge. So ... these labels shift presumably in response to market forces a bit too. What I "hated" about SS is much-muted in what I wound up with anyway. So just stating "SS" encompasses a wide range of finishes, still (I think).