The Beauty of Hidden Features

You’ve just had a dinner party, and an overly helpful guest pulls open the dishwasher and starts loading it. Don’t you just hate that? Well, one way to keep alien mitts off your china is to hide the dishwasher. Not in the garage, but hide it in plain sight.

A number of appliance makers are applying the same trompe l’oeil techniques to dishwashers that have made refrigerators look like just another piece of cabinetry. Sub-Zero, a pioneer in disguising refrigerators, now offers a dishwasher that resembles regular, under-the-counter drawers.

That’s also much what Miele’s dishwasher looks like. No box-like plain front or exterior controls. Instead, it appears to be a stack of three drawers, its push buttons hidden inside the top. Fisher & Paykel, an appliance maker in New Zealand and Australia, calls its disguised dishwasher the DishDrawer. The design is smart as well as attractive, reducing the need for bending over to load or empty the dishwasher. And everybody just hates that.

Fisher & Paykel: https://www.fisherpaykel.com; Sub-Zero: (800) 222-7820; Miele: (888) 656-4353.