I was going to limit this to just one pattern, maybe in multiple colors. But I wanted to highlight the diversity of laminate pattens (one of the big advantages of the material), so I'm opening up to any distinctly patterned laminate (speckles are a pattern, but not what I hav in mind for this exercise).

Here are some of Formica's patterns. If you want to go off this list, for example to another laminate manufacturer, that's fine, but the laminate should have a distinctive (non-stone, non-wood) pattern.

Formica's European website showed a much greater selection of bold patterns in vivid colors. I'm okay with you using these, but be aware that IRL you'd have to go to a lot of work and expense to import them:

http://www.formica.eu.com/publish/site/eu/sweden/en/home/our_products/ formica__collection/patterns.psresults.html?search_term=F5291&search_a tom=ProductID

A Brief History of Formica (and laminate countertops in general)

Formica, a combination of fibers and thermosetting resin, was first invented in 1913 as an electrical insulator. The inventors soon found other applications for the material. Patterned laminate was introduced in 1927, and laminate counters came into limited use at that time. But laminate counters really took off in kitchens in 1938 when the development of melamine thermosetting resin made the material more heat resistant.

Textolite samples (Source: Retrorenovation.com)
The last sample in the second row is what my mother still has in her 1960 kitchen.

Formica samples (source RetroPlanet.com)

Interesting links:
http://retrorenovation.com/2010/12/03/the-history-of-laminate-countert ops-and-melamine/
http://nwrenovation.com/kitchen-articles/vintage-formica/

Rules
> Do your homework first. This isn't such a huge part of the present exercise compared to the historic homes exercises)but I've thrown in some information here for your edification.

> Be unique. Patterned laminate was extremely popular in mid-century design, but don't feel you need to restrict yourself to homes of that era, since patterns have continued to be manufactured and used since then. Your laminate doesn't have to be a countertop. It could be a tabletop, or whatever application you want.

> Put it in context. Your design should flow from the look of the house.

> Use a realistic budget. Laminate is a budget material, but if you want to go more upscale, that's okay too.

> Show your work. Explain and rationalize your choices.

> Critique others and accept criticism yourself. You spend a lot of time on your design, and you deserve some constructive feedback, good and bad. Don't make criticisms personal, and don't take criticisms personally. This isn't a finished kitchens thread so nobody has to pretend to like something they don't.

Doorstyle - White appliances - primary and secondary hardware - chairs

Table - white glass chandelier - art.

I chose the blue accent color in the art because the color of a typical Beluga Caviar tin is a deep blue.

I like the picture Pal.

Roarah, that pull with the boomerang is great, as is the funky light fixture.

(I mostly lurk here, but have been loving the Design Around This threads.)

It feels fun an funky and perfect for the mood they want to set. They have a direction now, so the wife searches for laminate counters to go with the Abstract Gray cabinets. She finds Wilsonart's Rose Bouquet, which is a special order, but when she asks about it, she's pleasantly surprised at how reasonable it is.

They then hit the thrift stores and antique spots and come up with a repro Sputnik chandelier to put above the Noguchi dining table with the Eames fiberglass chairs. The big finds were the hot pink lacquer buffet and the complete set of 4 barstools to be placed at the island bar. Some Doug Mockett pulls and the plain stainless Ikea sink are installed as finishing touches to the kitchen, and they paint the spiral staircase leading to the sleeping loft a bright pink. The special order counters aren't in yet, but they and the Home Depot Merola ceramic pebble tile backsplash and the rest of the space can wait until they get back from their trip to the New Orleans Jazz Festival.

Cabinet door - Large format tile backsplash with alternating silver or bronze liner tile - brushed bronze hardware and fixtures - Adura Vibe vinyl floor - stainless steel appliances.

It would be easy to go with blue grey as the secondary color and keep the light fixture in the gold0brown colorway:
However, you could shift into a grey blue colorway, That could be picked up in the chairs:
and maybe some kind of blue top on the brass table pedestal:

Pal I wish I had choosen a different formica:) Your board is lovely. I have those chairs cut out too but chickened out and went for a safer color in the end and I thought the curve mimiced the sink...

LWO again yours is wonderfully colorful! My mom, also retired, is very into pink, in decor, all of a sudden. She says it makes her feel happy and young. She had never liked or used pink til recently! Your board makes me smile. It is something I would not use but would be thrilled if my mom did!

Cabinet Ikea Rubrik
Uppers Ikea Avsikt

Counter Formica Dogbone White & backsplash is striped approximating the fabric shown using different colors and widths of tile

Hardware is Ikea Satta knobs & pulls in white (for the lowers) and green (for the uppers); paint is BM Hawaiian Breeze

Lighting

Ikea table and chairs. The stool is similar to a mid-century one her mother had,

They choose Formica for their backsplash wall - it will cover the full wall, no upper cabinets, just an open teak shelf.

Teak counters run the length of the main kitchen run:

Black matte cabinets

with a black and teak island like this:

With these pulls (second one):

sushi plate

Wegner Teak table and chairs

Lighting

Furniture in the adjoining sitting room

I like all three of the Beluga kitchens. I especially like Pal's use of the bubbly WZ accent tile in his first. The vinyl floor in the second manages to look elegant in the second one with the brushed bronze harware. Roarah, I like the color of your cabinets, but the distressed finished seems at odd with the other elements. I love that you used the Marmoleum croco--that was my second choice of material for this exercise.

LWO, your kitchen is so far over the top I don't know what to say. Just, wow.

Sochi, I love yours. Every time I got to the next design element, I was like, "Oooh!" and the the next one, "Oooooooh!" Very Zen.

Best thing to happen on GW in a dog's age.

All your kitchens are quite interesting.

(But Pal is NKI).

I don't know what NKI means, except Nash-Kelvinator-International--and they used the acronym for a prototype car that became the Nash Metropolitan. The first picture that popped up for Nash Metropolitan would go perfectly with Live Wire Oak's concept:

Sochi, I like the formica you picked, the color and the sculpting. I would like that "middle of the road" budget Hans Wegner Chair at $2500-3500 :D

Let's talk about taking your favourite pictures and using them in a kitchen. Wall murals for sure, or if you have no uppers, put art on your walls. I like your flamingos, in fact my DH has a cool picture of a flamingo I've often wanted to do something with (pasted below). A cool mural for sure. What about using a plexiglass type removable backsplash and putting pictures behind that? I've seen pictures of wonderful tile / mural backsplashes, what about using a photograph?

Flamingo

palimpsest - I should have specified "cheap(er) knock-off versions" of the Wegner chairs!

Formica Tangled Seaweed

Earthy grey cabinets

A bit of Mission Trebol patterned tile

Some Damask Wallpaper

Add in rustic bronze knobs and pulls, a Cafe Brown Silgranit sink with Premier bronze faucet, a natural oak Essex dining table, Patara dining chairs, a bronze Maitland Smith sideboard with some retro lamps, a modern grey and tan wool rug, Landmark Lighting Cirque fixture above the dining table, and a tan drum shade island fixture for the island. All grounded on gold travertine floors and a custom light taupe paint for most of the walls.

Neutrals do not have to be boring. :)

That might be a good design around too: non-banal neutral.
Although I am looking forward to an Amerituscan challenge.

Not anything earth shattering, but my kitchen has a coastal/beachy theme.

I'm building around these Formica Fossil Weft counters with a metal banded edge:

Soft blue/green glass subways backsplash:

Beadboard type cabinets but uppers would have seeded glass:

Let's put some reclaimed driftwood floors in there:

This rustic kitchen island painted a darker brown/grey

I'm going to brighten up the walls with BM Hawthorne Yellow

Appliances will be stainless; sink will be a Kohler cast iron.

Nautical type lanterns over the island:

A simple chandelier for over the table:

Table and chairs:

The living room entertainment wall:

The sofa for flopping on while watching sports or movies:

The kitchen is all on one wall with Charcoal Boomarang Formica covering the entire wall. There are open stainless steel shelves on the wall instead of upper cabinets. The countertop is Graphite Grafix Formica and the lower cabinets are all stainless steel. Stellar mini pendants hang over the Silgranite Anthracite sink with Kohler matte black faucet. All the appliances are black and the young man has a black tool cart with drawers topped with a thick butcherblock for an "island". The floor of the entire great room is Camelion concrete tiles in dark gray, silver, and white.

Kode, wow! I really LOVE those tiles. I have to research them now. The room sure puts off a cohesive manly vibe. I can feel the testosterone from here! :) It's certainly the room of a young man (or a divorced man of 50! LOL!), but I find it a bit severe even for the most die hard techno dude. Myabe softer upholstered chairs for the dining table and some fabric for window treatments? And although I LOVE the stainless cabinets, one of them would break the bank for someone trying to do a more budget kitchen. Love the toolbox island. I actually have a 1950s red Snap-On chest that I'm contemplating doing the same thing with for the pantry area so it's good to know I'm not insane for thinking about it.

I love what everyone has come up with. A very cool exercise :)

Client is a couple with 2 children. This is a second, vacation home, a cabin in the Sierras. The couples tastes run to modern, but they wanted rustic for the cabin. The tension between modern and rustic led to the following choices.

Lighting

Backsplash Marmoleum Butter and Counter Formica Earthen Warp; Cabinets are kaffe quartersawn oak Shaker; floor is porcelain stone-look tile in taupe

Hardware

Sink & Vintage McCoy Pottery

Table and chairs

I'm taking off for the holdiay and won't be connected. Looking forward to seeing all the designs when I get back (and maybe a new thread by then).

When I first looked at your post, I couldn't figure out what the Trend Aureo tile was. It looked like the fiberglass mesh backing for mosaics. Once I had the tile name, I Googled it and figured out what I was looking at. It's funny that so elegant a tile can look like somthing so pedestrian.

My countertop pick is the Spring gold.

The backsplash is mirrored wall paper.

The cabinets are custom.

Capaws, the butter yellow and taupe is almost too sophisticated for a cabin in the Sierras. It's main house material to me! Especially with those lights. They pull a little formal for a cabin. It is a peaceful and restful vibe and the pattern you chose does work visually.

To me, laminate is about cheap and fun. If you want to play it safe for the next 15 years, there are plenty more materials to choose from. It's not "disposable". But it is a lot less serious. Look at the Europeans and their relationship with laminate. It's a favored material for cabinets there because of the ability to print darn near anything on laminate and have it be a decent wear surace. Just look at this interior door in a laminate design.

And this sliding closet door in laminate with a print.

This is what you can do with laminate!

And yes, you can still do "wood" laminates more affordably than the real thing and still have it look great.

Because of it's whimsy, I think my favorite kitchen in this is Live Wire's wild kitsch one. Who couldn't smile every day coming home to flamingos! For those that think the rose counter is a little much, what about Molten Glass Blue instead?

Cawaps turquoise and lime Ikea kitchen is also fun and low budget. It also makes me smile.

The kitchens with the broadest appeal, meaning interesting but neutral, would have to be Sochi's's, Pal's Neutral Beluga, Live Wire's second kitchen, and Cawap's yellow and tan one. That's not meant as either complimentary or critical. Just factual. Neutrals appeal to a lot of people, but it's harder than most think to make their house work in neutrals. These kitchens get neutrals right, although some secondary soft color is used in 3 out of the 4. I debated on terming the other grey Beluga kitchens as neutrals and decided that because the green was a bit more intense and present than the grey, they didn't qualify as "neutral", even though they work well. And although Kode's kitchen is also technically nothing but neutrals, it scares me. :) It has great cohesion and plenty of interesting choices, but I think that kitchen is waiting on it's first blood sacrifice to become sentient!

Blood red is such an interesting accent color, don't you think?

muahahahahaha

We are going to be replacing our laminate counters with new in our upcoming remodel, and as we're looking for laminate patterns, this thread is great!
This is one choice we're considering. Although it's a faux wood, which we didn't want, I'm hoping it looks kind of kitschy...have to go see it in person:

Also love the name-- Pionite's Leave Likatre :)

Wallpaper/ Door / Laminate (it's white that's the picture
Knob/ Chair and Table
Granitewear lamp / Floor.

The house is in a lovely location near national forests and a small river runs through the property; the stone fireplace and oak paneling is rustic (along with all the views outside) but the overall design is more contemporary. Unfortunately, the builders made everything brown or tan in the whole '80s house. Golds, greens, and dark-wood-color (accent to the golden oak cabs) have been introduced.

Retirement=fixed income=DIY + extremely careful spending

The golden oak cabs aren't in style but fit well enough with the contemporary side of the house while the copper hinges fit the rustic side. The tile goes through most of the house and, with two dogs and lots of dirt and snow outside the door, the easy upkeep and the no-cost of keeping it are no-brainers. Existing white dishwasher and fridge that'll stay til they die. Replacing the slow original electric smoothtop with the gas SS cooktop was a splurge that pays for itself every time a meal can be prepared when the weather takes out the power.

A neighbor has had the sink sitting in their field for a few decades and is very grateful to get rid of it.

At first Dogbone White was a favorite (dogs rule!) since the counter would be right next to the white sink and the gray of the SS cooktop and the dogbone pattern went with the vintage sink. The quilted SS backsplash seemed to go well with the gray dogbones and SS cooktop. Oh, and vintage white enamel light and a couple SS bar pulls for the pantries that flanked the sink run.

Except instead of a bland tan kitchen it'd be a bland tan and gray one. Blech.

Moving on to the best color, green, Formica Grass, Tangle Seaweed, and Seagrass Strand stood out since they had green but also amber that maybe pulled in the cab color and white for the sink and appliances. But do the Seagrass 'Strands' echo the river running outside the window? Seems like a neat idea. The Fasade copper quilted backsplash pattern pulls in the copper hinges and is very contemporary but the copper maybe made it somewhat rustic as well, at least more rustic than SS would be. Two of these pulls for the pantrys that flanked the sink run are affordable; no other cabs have hardware at all which is fine. The light is something findable in the local area and DH can make the fixtures, especially if copper pipe is used instead of conduit.

It still doesn't have a lot of color but ''it'll be fine.''

But since the redo isn't happening until next year, there's more time to look at lots and lots of kitchens on the web. And this tile popped up with green, tan, and white like Seagrass Strand. But blue too, does that add too many colors? And pine trees, mountains, and maybe a river just like what's outside the kitchen window. This is expensive tile but using Talavera tile as the field brings the cost down.

The blue is the wall color, a deeply pigmented natural clay plaster.

What do you think?

Thanks to those who hung in there through the whole post!

jterrilynn - holy cow. I think your 50s couple and LWO's couple need to meet. What is happening to these 50 somethings? They sure are stepping out there (which is a good thing, just to be clear). I think all your elements hang together well, but I'm still trying to take it all in. Is that a shoe encased in amber??

Mtnfever - everything looks great to my eye. I agree with GreenDesigns about the oak though - could you possibly stain or paint it?

I would like to do something with the Bacterio laminate by Ettore Sottsass.

Mtnfever
I like the Seagrass strand and that scenic tile a lot.

Anyway, I thought I'd try to take her LR palette and create a kitchen. I don't think this is neutral...

Starting with Wilsonart Laminate Counters - there is a wave or feather like pattern to it.

The colour scheme:

Cabinets like these, but in a mustard yellowy orange, like the colour above:

Goya red wall paper with thread-like mustard accents:

I want to use this wallpaper as an accent, perhaps behind glass as a backsplash?

Yes, this fridge is from Europe, but I couldn't easily find a chocolate brown fridge in NA. Shame. We had brown appliances in my '70s kitchen:

There was a fair amount of spanish styled wrought iron in our house:

And a quick glimpse into the living room:

I will think hard about staining the cabs darker like the floor tile grout color. Changing the cab color raises other questions that I'll post separately when I get closer to something happening.

Meanwhile, the Formica blog shows design trends from Neocon where fabrics are based on science ala Pal's ''germy'' fabric ;) .

I think these would look great in a truly Atomic home. We live very close to Los Alamos (and somewhat windward, which is not so good, potentially) and if we really lived there, it would be so cool to have the chartreuse design on the wall, table, or countertop.

thanks again, and cheers

GreenDesigns, thanks for posting the Euro pics. Laminate is fun, and I think we in the U.S. have lost our appreciation for that. I've loved seeing the different laminates people found to work with--those roses! And the Molten Glass Blue!!

Sochi, you credited me with the kitchen with the Beluga pulls--that was Roarah (gorgeous kitchen).

Pal, I like the B/W kitchen. Which of the Marmoeum graphic series is that? It looks like a slate gray background rather than black, and I think I'd like to see a sharp B/W (Sgraffito rather than Signo or Dry Point).

GreenDesigns, you said, "Butter yellow and taupe is almost too sophisticated for a cabin in the Sierras." I totally agree. My "story" was a client (not that I'm actually a pro) who SAID they wanted rustic, but rejected things that were actually rustic and kept drifting toward a sleeker modern look. "You know, rustic, but modern." The resulting kitchen would be considered "rustic" by no one but the fictional clients.

Mtnfever, I like the last set of tile you posted. Very pretty. I like the Seagrass strand, but I think the tangled seaweed would tie in well with the existing Oak cabinets. I didn't think the dogbone white/stainless would work with the oak. Good luck with your choices!

Or we can open the floor to other suggestions. LWO suggested "With all of the talk about the OTK, maybe we should put a white kitchen on the list---minus white subways and marble. Force some creativity and out of the "kit" thinking. An almost all white space is very hard to do right."

Anyone else have a preference?

Suggestions here.....Then maybe some kind of interesting material (Corian, RTA cabinets from a box store or Ikea, sheet vinyl, tile counters) that sees little exposure here. And then maybe the white kitchens for white Christmas week through New Years when everyone is going to be bored with the holidays and ready for school to take up again.

As for other materials for a later date, I really do think that using knotty pine would be a great challenge. I dislike it, but I've seen a few neat spaces with KP lately (not kitchens though). Plywood panels is another related material I've seen used in interesting ways of late.

I would say look at "Tuscan" kitchens as one finds in google images, then look at pictures of real Italian kitchens. The latter images aren't easy to find, and a lot of Italian kitchens seem to be bits of IKEA stuck in a really old house.

Then come up with a kitchen that connotes to you good taste and old world or Italian and make it something that fits in a real American house...no sagging ceiling and such a la Tuscan outbuilding.

If that seems ok I will start a thread on it.

Googling Cucina Toscana is more likely to turn up authentic Italian kitchens (on Italian language websites) than "Tuscan Kitchen" (although you get a lot of U.S. restaurants, and a lot of food pics, too).