Design Plus Kitchens

Modern or classic kitchen: choosing a style you will still like

What separates the two beyond the door shape, how each ages, and how to decide when the kitchen opens onto the living room.

27 October 2026

The difference people name is the door: flat and handleless for modern, framed and panelled for classic. The differences that matter after a year are elsewhere.

Cleaning

A flat front is a single surface and wipes in one movement. A panelled front has corners, and corners in a kitchen collect. This is not an argument against classic — it is a reason to be honest about who cleans the kitchen and how often.

How each one ages

Classic fronts change slowly as a style; a panelled door from fifteen years ago still reads as a panelled door. Modern fronts move faster, and the parts that date are the specific details of the moment — a particular handle, a particular colour — more than the flat door itself.

The open-plan test

If the kitchen opens onto the living room, it is furniture before it is a kitchen, and it has to sit with what is already in the room. The usual mistake is choosing the kitchen style first and then discovering it argues with the majlis.

A middle route that holds up

Many delivered kitchens land between the two: simple fronts with a restrained detail, and the character carried by the counter, the lighting and one wall rather than by the doors. It dates more slowly than either pure style, because the parts that date are the cheapest ones to change.

Design Plus makes both, and the showroom inside the factory has finished kitchens in each so you can open them and judge with your hands rather than from a screen.

Delivered kitchens across the Emirates