 It's not called Winner Home for nothing, you the viewer can win one of three completed apartments at Valduvia State valued at over 3 million rand by voting for your favorite design contestant's bathroom on privateproperty.co.za. Winner Home is proudly brought to you by Private Property in association with NetBank. Yes and indeed it's time for Winner Home on afternoon express and don't forget that you can increase your chances of winning that grand prize apartment if you buy any Plaskon product, an SMS the keyword Plaskon, the last six digits of the barcode and your full name to 32979 this puts you in line to win a golden ticket not like the one on those TV shows where you have to sing for a living which allows you to be one of the finalists in the grand prize competition, tees and seas do apply. Now remember that the kitchen is that room in the house that you want to be both completely on trend yet feel homey and welcoming all while it is also functional it is a space where we can create and while we want it to be inspired we also are looking for beautiful lines perfect surfaces and usability so this afternoon we have Caesar Stone's marketing director Trevor King with us in the loft to share with us the local and international trends when it comes to the kitchen and aka my favorite room in the house Trevor welcome back. Thanks Tim he's only great to be here. You've travelled the world and I'm very envious of your travels you must have seen the most incredible architecture you must have seen the most incredible kitchens which I would just die to be in just for half an hour to make soup or something simple and there are a lot of trends going on locally and internationally let's talk a little bit about how you think Caesar Stone are incorporating those international trends into something like surfaces. I think surfaces are an important part of a kitchen design because they're the tactile experience that you have you're touching them you're working on them all the time so it's really important that that the surface is that you're comfortable with it that it's working in the design of the kitchen it's a very strong part of a kitchen design and from a Caesar Stones point of view we've recognized that the gauge of the material that we work with and needs to be varied so we've introduced a 13 millimeter Caesar Stone that allows you to use a thin surface and to mix it with a thicker surface all in the same plane which is very much on international trends. Exciting development. Indeed I see a lot of our design contestants actually using that 13 mil which has been exciting for us to see them keeping on trend but in terms of the other spaces in the house and particularly the kitchen obviously what other trends have you seen besides those surfaces becoming thinner? I think the other trend that I've seen is that the kitchen's becoming a far more intentional space it's not just a functional space it's a part of a house it has a mood it has an atmosphere lighting affects it it the lighting is no more just functional it's now moody it helps establish what you want to say about the kitchen it's it's a great addition to the kitchen design. Well let's break up each of those different elements because one thing I've seen in terms of the trends has been the idea that you're trying to create space in the kitchen so a lot of stuff is being put away into cupboards and you know appliances being hidden away in certain aspects and why is that an expand on that trend for us? I think because it just comes back to the fact that the kitchen's just not a functional space so now you sit at almost like you would sit another part of the house really to receive the guests that you were receiving. The shelving in the kitchen a whole lot more open and intentionally styled open shelving floor to ceiling back backlit walls that have shelves in front of them with opaque glass in front of them yeah just a completely different thing to what we used to. Which is interesting because our judges have all been not complaining they've been warning our contestants to keep an eye out on shelving because space is always going to be an issue and making sure that the contestants remain present to that and remain cognizant of that and because I think shelving is a big thing and I'm glad to see it's also moving into the kitchen but let's talk a bit about lighting you've mentioned it before how do we go about creating trendy lighting and what are the trends in terms of lighting in kitchens? I think the trends are that yes it has to be functional because you've got to work and then you've got to see what you're doing but it's also got to set the mood so the lighting there are feature lights, lights are part of the design when you design the kitchen and you don't just add a light and you actually add a feature light to develop the design and also just to add light and dark areas to set the mood. I see great idea. Technology also is moving in a really cool direction when it comes to the sort of kitchen spaces. I mean a lot of the appliances that we're buying are quite trendy in their styles. How do we go about incorporating good trendy decisions when buying appliances and what is going on in that space? I think there's so many great appliances available in our country and there's a lot more coming. In Europe I was seeing that there were digital scales built into the surface of the material, spots that you could just put your cell phone on the kitchen surface and it would charge it, taps that just that all you did was turn your hand over the space and the tap turned on or off so great things coming but right now they're not here yet. Oh well it's going to get then at that point I think everyone's going to get even more and more excited about spending more time in those kitchens. Our design contestants are spending a lot of their time in the kitchen and I'd really like to know from you how you're hoping to see them use your products. Well I'm hoping that they use it intentionally so that it's used from a functional point of view but also just to break some of the stereo types of how you used Caesar stone as a surface material to move it onto the walls to move it into building sinks to move it onto even the floor and possibly even onto the cupboard doors. Sure, good advice. Trevor thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Awesome it's such a pleasure and contestants make sure you're listening very very closely. Remember also at home entries for Caesar stone's kitchen of the year 2016 are still open and will be open until the end of July. So if you have a beautifully designed kitchen which incorporates Caesar stone that was installed any time between the 1st of January 2015 and the 31st of July this year this could be your opportunity to win really really big. Simply log on to Caesarstone.co.za where you can enter and find more details as well as all of those T's and C's for that competition. And today is the last chance for you to vote for your favorite design contestants master bedroom as well while you're online so don't hesitate any longer. It's not called win a home for nothing. You the viewer can win one of the three completed apartments at the Valdivia state valued at over three million rand by voting for your favorite design contestants master bedroom on private property.co.za. Win a home is proudly brought to you by Private Property in association with Ned Bank.