Green your appliances and still have a fabulous kitchen
So you are looking to upgrade your kitchen and are looking for the best way to incorporate the advances in energy efficiency without sacrificing style? Luckily kitchen appliances have come a long way in the past two decades. Gone are the days of one or two colors and minimal styling. And the energy efficiency improvements have been quite impressive as well, it is estimated that a refrigerator built today will use 60% less energy than one built 20 years ago. With that in mind let’s take a few things into consideration:
When it comes to the kitchen most people want 2 things:
- A useable space that makes food preparation easy and enjoyable
- “Wow” factor like they see when they are watching all those catchy shows on HGTV
If we combine those 2 ideals with the following facts from the energy star website:
- Appliances use the 4th most energy in the average US home
- 13% of the energy used in your home is derived from your appliances
We can find a marriage between form and function, or in this case class and energy efficiency. In other words we can have our cake and eat it too. The important thing is to consider where to begin. The largest user of electricity in your kitchen is your refrigerator, hands down. This is the key place to start when finding a style you like with one that is energy efficient. Remember to take into account whether the model is energy star rated and also how much energy it is expected to use per year (all that information is readily available online an in stores).
Once you have settled on that, simply roll that same style into your other appliances you select for your kitchen (dishwasher, stove, microwave, etc). It is still important to look for the energy star label on these other appliances, but really the refrigerator is the elephant in the room, so make sure to get that one right. There is no reason that you can’t have a fabulous kitchen that has an added bonus of saving the environment (not to mention some money every month on your utility bills).
