The Best for Kitchen Ideas

It’s hard to go into a kitchen store and really examine all its products and see how they work without getting the hard sell to buy something. So just imagine walking into a living magazine of sorts, where you can explore kitchens of every imaginable style and test appliances without the slightest pressure to buy anything.

There is such a place. The Fretz Corp. is the Mid-Atlantic distributer of high-end kitchen appliances. It sells only to kitchen dealers, but its vast showroom in Columbia, MD, is open to the public. “It’s a good place to come get ideas,” says Jaime Brown, one of Fretz’s “Dream Kitchen” consultants.

The showroom displays kitchens from highly traditional to ultra contemporary, and if you are interested in products such as Sub-Zero refrigerators and Wolf ranges, Franke hardware or Best by Broan ventilation, you can see those brands’ entire lines, rather than the two or three models a kitchen dealer will probably have. “Here they can see all the different sizes, all the different design applications,” Brown says. “You can come and really get hands-on with the product. It’s a place to see them and see them in actual settings.”