As an influencer who chronicles managing her large family on TikTok, Melanie Cade has become an expert in the art of liquid refreshments.
In addition to two refrigerators placed side-by-side in the kitchen, Ms Cade, a mother of 10 in Birmingham, Ala., has a five-gallon water dispenser for hot and cold filtered water; two coffee-making stations.
A wine fridge in the master bedroom for bottled water, protein drinks, and her husband’s Red Bulls; a hot cocoa and toppings bar that Ms Cade puts out on holiday weekends; two countertop nugget ice makers; and, in the pantry, a glass-front, commercial beverage cooler that she bought on Facebook Marketplace when a local Subway franchise was renovating.
“One thing that I try not to do as a big family is a one-size-fits-all,” Ms Cade said. “Because at the end of the day, all of our children are individuals — they like what they like, and they don’t like what they don’t like. So I try to keep some of everybody’s favourites.”
Ms Cade is a master of what those in the interior design industry call the home beverage station, a.k.a. a dedicated space for drinks of all kinds and their accoutrements.
“A secondary beverage centre continues to be a trend that we’ve seen momentum with,” said Joe Downey, the senior merchant of appliances at the Home Depot, who added that it began during the pandemic when Americans spent more time cooking, drink-making and buying in bulk.
Now, he said, those same people have elevated culinary skills, more confidence, and a desire for more advanced gear to support their new habits.
In a recent poll by the National Kitchen and Bath Association, a trade group, 72 per cent of respondents said their clients wanted more refrigeration space, and 87 per cent said adding a dedicated fridge for beverages was on the rise.
An ideal beverage station also streamlines gadgets, accessories, flavourings, and serving ware, said Wendy Trunz, who has helped design dozens around New York City as a partner in the home organisation company Jane’s Addiction. They tend to be specific, she said.
“There are coffee stations, then you’ve got smoothie and juice stations. You’ve got the wine bars and the beer bars. You even have kegerators in people’s offices, then you’ve got seltzer stations, and you’ve got the juice boxes and stuff for kids,” Ms Trunz said.
Michel Smith Boyd, an interior designer who hosts HGTV’s “Luxe For Less,” said he thinks of beverage stations as “a V.I.P. experience that you customise for your house.”
In one 30,000-square-foot home, Mr Boyd said, the owner had him install a refrigerated soda dispenser in the scullery behind the kitchen so she could keep a hidden tap of Diet Coke.
Mr Boyd said part of the beverage station’s appeal may be rooted in a time when butlers brought the wealthy drinks on a tray.
“Basically, we’re making it more convenient to get the drinks ourselves, rather than hiring the butler,” Mr Boyd said.
At Kegman in Connecticut, sales of custom kegerators have been booming, said owner David Booth, as customers want nonalcoholic, carbonated options like kombucha or cold-brew coffee on tap.
“They don’t want to drink alcohol like they used to,” he said, “but they like the ceremony of it, or, if you want to call it tradition, to have something different at night or on weekends.”
Both the National Kitchen and Bath Association and Domino magazine count dedicated beverage fridges as one of their top trends for 2026, and they are already widely available in multiple price points and formats.
French-door refrigerators come with auto-refilling water pitchers inside a freezer door; drink coolers are now tucked inside leather sectionals; and you can buy Rocco’s Super Smart Fridge, a $2,000, glass-front, dual-temperature-zone mini fridge from a Brooklyn start-up that produces only a few hundred fridges at a time and occasionally drops limited-edition special colours.
“For the first six months, we were completely backordered,” said Alyse Borkan, who co-founded the company two years ago. They’ve since sold out seven times.
Lauren Tolles, the founder of Maison Birmingham, a custom cabinet company in Michigan, said the trend is partly enabled by the sheer variety of fridges, freezers, and wine fridges, many of which come “panel ready,” so they can blend into whatever cabinet they’re placed in. Lately, she said, she’s been advising her clients to sneak a refrigerator drawer into their bedroom closets.
Interior designers around the country said that one of the increasingly popular options for custom buildouts is a “morning bar” featuring an automatic coffee maker built flush into a wall.
