Smart Appliances & the Kitchen of Tomorrow

From dishwashers with digital interfaces to smartphone apps that can manage entire home heating systems, this shift in home appliances means that the household of tomorrow will be drastically different to that of today.

The smart appliances market is most definitely on the rise. In 2010 the market had a global value of $40 million. It has since grown to $9.7 billion and, by the end of this decade, it is projected to surpass $26 billion. Last year, there was more than $3.5 billion worth of smart washers sold, while global smart refrigerator sales were just under $2.7 billion.

These figures clearly show an ever-increasing demand for smart appliances, but what makes them so appealing to householders? The obvious attraction is the convenience factor. Smart fridges can tell you what contents it currently stocks while you are out and about, so it is very easy for you to deduce what groceries you need to buy. Smart cookers will be able to identify the correct temperature and cooking time for the meal that you’re preparing, sparing you from mentally carrying out a series of calculations. Smart dryers acknowledge energy efficiency by switching off automatically as soon as they detect that your clothes are dried.

Aside from smart appliances, where does the future in kitchen technology lie? With the rise of 3D printers, you’ll be able to literally print your own food, while urban cultivators will enable you to grow vegetables indoors, as well as recycling water from appliances such as your washing machine. There is even the possibility of dry washing becoming commonplace, with dry ice doing water’s job so as to aid water conservation.

We are already seeing monumental changes in the ways in which we run our kitchens, and as described above, further shifts are soon set to occur. The typical kitchen of 2020 will most likely be very different from that of 2010.

This piece was written by Andrew Sweeny from Irish worktops and countertops fabricators Pennywell (www.pennywell.ie), which also produced the corresponding infographic.