Black Stainless Appliances and Their Unique Features

We can all appreciate the new, sleek appliance color black stainless. Did you know LG, KitchenAid and Samsung all have appliances with the black stainless finish? But each finish has a little different hue then the next. LG’s black stainless has a high gloss finish, KitchenAid’s black stainless is a matte black finish, with a gold tone to it and Samsung’s black stainless has hints of blue in it. GE has a painted slate finish, which is a great neutral color for any kitchen. Slate finished appliances have  the most flexible in price range. If you look at their line of appliances you’ll most likely find something that can fit into your budget. All of these new finishes are designed to fight off fingerprints and fit in with almost any modern decor perfectly.

LG Black Diamond Collection

Coined “The Black Diamond collection”  LG’s black stainless is stainless steel that has been darkened and treated with a high gloss top coat. It reminds Adam Bouc appliance expert at Ernie’s of a freshly waxed show car. He added “ If you look closely, you can still see the grains of the stainless steel shine through.”

LG has tapped into the new trend of the door-in-door. The door-in-door is great for the quick trips into the fridge to grab the ketchup and mustard out of the door or to get a jug milk. The door-in-door feature is great for all the family snacks and go to foods without opening up the entire refrigerator and letting all the cool air out. Another popular feature the LG has on models with the exterior ice and water dispenser, is the ice maker that makes ice the size of bartender ice. And not only does LG have refrigerators with top of the line features even their microwaves do too.  For their microwaves that are above a range, they have a new extendable vent that pulls out from the bottom of the microwave to help diffuse the steam from cooking on the range. Currently LG is the only one with a microwave feature like that.

Samsung

Samsung like LG has a door-in-door feature, although theirs is a little bit different and is called “Food showcase”. Instead of having shelves attached to the door there’s a metal cooling panel, which is designed to keep the door two degrees cooler than the rest of the fridge. According to Brit Buresh Appliance manager at Ernie’s this cooler temp is designed to extend the life of your milk by several days. He also added “this innovative design allows access to your most used items quickly, it’s like a fridge within a fridge for added convenience.”   

Select Samsung dishwashers have the new feature called the water wall. Why wash a square with a circle? It’s impossible to get every part of the square clean. The water wall is a row of six jets at the back of the dishwasher on the bottom row. On the opposite side of the dishwasher is a deflector that shoots the water straight up, so every corner gets cleaned.

Samsung’s Flex Duo range now gives you a few options to choose from, now you can open the top half of the oven or the whole door. The Flex duo range comes with divider, which slides into your oven horizontally, dividing the oven in half. Once the divider is in place you now have two mini ovens that are now controlled independently. According to Samsung’s market research, “a surprisingly high number of users almost always leave the divider in, which makes for faster pre-heat times and better energy efficiency.”

KitchenAid

KitchenAid also has a new Black stainless steel available. They choose to focus on built in appliances with this new finish. “you won’t find any freestanding ranges from KitchenAid in Black stainless” according to Allan Pearson appliance specialist at Ernie’s. “but they do have several range hoods, wall ovens, dishwashers, cook tops, and some really innovative new refrigerators available in the new color.”

The anchor of the new KitchenAid line up is their five door refrigerator. The top two doors are standard French doors. The middle has two, soft close drawers. One drawer is designed for produce and the other drawer gives you the option to chose from meat/fish, cold drinks, green herbs, deli/cheese and thaw/marinate, allowing you to change the temperature of that drawer. The fifth door is the standard freezer drawer, but inside has 3-teir freezer drawer with storage divider.   According to Chris Follett appliance expert at Ernie’s this 5 door fridge is the first of its kind. He added “this is the fridge to buy if you want to be organized. It has a place for everything, plus the platinum interior give this fridge a very unique look instead of just looking like a white box on the inside. It even comes with a special herb storage compartment, KitchenAid thought of everything.”   

All new KitchenAid refrigerators have the new stainless steel handle design. On both ends of the handles is a red medallion, if you don’t like the color red and would prefer to have black or silver medallions they can be special ordered for you.  Along with the new handle design KitchenAid has made the interior of some of their refrigerators a little more stylish by having an all platinum interior with chrome door basket holders and removable door baskets for easy cleaning.

GE Slate

GE has been making the slate color for over 3 years now. They started with just a few models and have now expanded the finish to almost their entire line of appliances. The Slate finish has the flexibility to work with almost every kitchen regardless if you need built in appliances or freestanding. According to Rick Powell appliance expert at Ernie’s Slate is by far the most popular new finish available. Rick also added “the versatility of the slate color is really second to none in the business as it provides a unique option that can work with any design and style of cabinets.”  

GE’s new dishwasher has great water bottle jets for those hard to clean bottles; this dishwasher also has  102 jets to cover every inch of the interior. GE’s new electric and gas stove tops are now flush, edge to edge. Another cool feature of the GE range is called Chef Connect. This new feature offers three options with a single touch. For instant convenience, choose when to automatically sync clocks and the range elements with the microwave's surface light and vent. Pre-sets are customizable, so if you don’t like the vent fan on, but cook with the hood light on you can program it to do so. Brit Buresh added “the connected home is going to start in the Kitchen, Ge and all of the other manufactures are working hard to make features like this available and at a reasonable price. I can’t wait to see what’s going to come out next.” 

Kaitlin Benes
Advertising & Furniture Sales