Many cooks have “shoo-ed” people out of their kitchens over the years, back when kitchens were designed as work spaces, and work spaces alone. But with changing, busier lifestyles and home designs entrench in open floorplans, kitchens are evolving to spaces where visitors are welcome while the work of cooking can still be done.

“The kitchen is the gathering place now,” said Maria Wilson, an owner/broker with Coldwell Banker Coastal Rivers Realty in Washington. “It’s a gathering place for entertaining and everything that happens with a family. It’s always been the heart of a home. As they’ve become more open and lives become busier, a kitchen has to be a combination of beauty and function.”

As a real estate professional Wilson sees the inside of many houses. She said while kitchens generally follow a few designs (u-shaped, galley or those with a center island), the trend toward open floorplans, with no walls between kitchens, living and dining areas, has led to a lot more thought going into kitchen design and décor — the kitchen is now a living area and should be just as welcoming and comfortable. No longer closed off from the rest of the house, today’s kitchens are often seen the moment a visitor steps into a home.

The incorporation into the broader concept of a living area is reflected cabinetry, countertops, lighting and appliances.

“People are looking for a beautiful backsplash or cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling, because it makes the ceiling look taller,” Wilson said. “There’s been a trend towards having at least a couple of your cabinets with glass (windows) to make it look like a piece of furniture. … And there’s much better lighting now, like LED lighting underneath cabinets.”

However, a kitchen must be functional, regardless of style, Wilson said, and function is evolving as well.

“As far as function goes, people now like drawers instead of cabinets. Or if you have cabinets, they want pull outs. Drawers and cabinets are customized — one drawer fits pots and pans or a cabinet for spices,” Wilson said.

Stainless steel appliances are still popular, as are easy-to-maintain stone countertops such as granite and ant-microbial quartz, she said. Also popular in this area are painted cabinets and shiplap (planked) walls, which give the kitchen area a cottage feel.

But no amount of style can make up for a badly designed kitchen.

“I’ve seen some beautiful kitchens that I wouldn’t want to cook in,” Wilson laughed.

According to the National Kitchen and Bath Association, kitchens should make the most of the “work triangle,” a triangle drawn with straight lines from cooking appliance to the sink and to the refrigerator, because that’s where most of the work in the kitchen should take place. No major kitchen traffic should cross through those lines, nor should an island or counter peninsula, and each side of the triangle should be between four and nine feet.

“You’ve got to have a decent, basic design, and it doesn’t even have to be that big. You don’t want that basic part of the kitchen that you work in to be that big, because you’ll run your legs off,” Wilson said. “But those who have more than one cook in the kitchen, they need more space.”

Wilson said it’s relatively easy, and not so very expensive to transform a kitchen, as long as it has innate functionality.

“There are certain things that are fairly easy to change like countertops. … You can always paint cabinets and change the hardware, and even buy new appliances,” she said. “If the space is good and it’s laid out well, then the rest of it is fairly easy to change, if you don’t have to move walls and things. But if you have a good overall design, that makes all the difference.”

The difference today, as opposed to the kitchens of yesteryear, is that instead of cooks shooing people out of the kitchen, everyone is welcome. Kitchens have truly evolved to be the center of every home.

“That’s where everybody ends up. That’s where life happens in a home. I guess that’s always been the case,” Wilson said.