Refrigerators are a modern day essential for the home; they delay the rate at which food decays and chill drinks to make them more enjoyable. Every untrained housewife needs a refrigerator, and the time may come when you’ll need to purchase a new one for your kitchen. In this post you’ll find design and style ideas, as well as a brief history of this modern day essential.
A Brief History
The first refrigerator was built in 1834 by Jacob Perkins (an Anglo-American investor, physicist and mechanical engineer). However, the concept and design of a refrigerator had been in existence since the 1700s, and cooling instruments for centuries before that. Refrigerators have now become a compulsory part of a person’s home, as they are used to keep food or liquids at a cool temperature so that it they can be stored for a longer period of time (it is also incredibly refreshing to take a sip of a nice cold drink).
Throughout the late ’90s, most refrigerators were the standard white colour, with not much design about them. It was also quite common to have a refrigerator and a separate freezer. Today, most people have a combined refrigerator and freezer, called a fridge-freezer, with numerous designs and added gadgets.
Design and Appearance
You can opt for numerous colours, from the classic white to silver and steel. There are even wacky, vibrant colours for those who dare to break conventions! You can also decide on your fridge to freezer size ratio (those who like to cook opt for a bigger fridge, due to there being more storage space for fresh food in comparison to frozen).
There are generally two popular designs of fridge-freezer, with the American-Style fridge-freezer and the alternative style that is generally found in Britain and other European countries. The American-Style fridge-freezer has areas that are side by side vertically, so that the doors meet in the middle and open akin to patio doors. The other design generally has two sections, with the fridge on top of the freezer or vice-versa.
If you are stuck on which design and colour would suit your kitchen, take into account the design and colour of other objects within the room; such as your kitchen taps, kitchen cupboard doors and all your other kitchen appliances, and try to match them on a similar design level and colour scheme. Stainless steel is currently a popular colour for refrigerators and can look sleek in a modern kitchen.
Additional Functions
Gadgets such as drink or ice dispensers can be built into a fridge-freezer, making it much easier to grab a nice, ice-cold drink. You can also look out for a “frost-free” option, which eliminates the need for defrosting. If your freezer does become so full of frost that you cannot open the freezer drawers, you will need to defrost your fridge, which can be tiresome and can put your frozen food at risk as you will need to remove it from the freezer.
