Dominant pastels accented with splashes of intense color.
American kitchens in the 1950s often featured white walls and cabinets with low-key gray and tan countertops and floors. Gradually, as hardwood cabinets became common, kitchens got browner. In recent years grays have become popular as have combinations of browns and grays. Both colors work well in kitchens, but you can use almost any color in your kitchen. Depending upon the specifics of your kitchen's layout and lighting, other colors and color combinations may work even better.
Colors From an Extended Palete
While popular kitchen colors have changed in the last 50 years, the three dominant colors--white, brown and gray--share their neutrality. But, as the Pantone Color Institute's Leatrice Eisemen notes, "The kitchen is absolutely a key place for color," because bold colors give energy to the room in the house where people most often gather. Another well-known designer, Jamie Drake, suggests bold colors, such as orange or red countertops and backsplashes to complement stainless appliances, and darker-than-usual cabinet colors that extend the color palette further.
Colors From Nature
As always, many good design ideas come from nature. Sky blue kitchen walls look attractive with a grass green floor. Color inspiration can come from beach sand and gravel; colors in this range mix well with natural woods. You can have dark cherry cabinets with sand-colored walls and gray linoleum or vinyl flooring that has about the same amount of color variation in the design that you might find in gravel. Your own garden is also an excellent source for kitchen colors.
Colors From Art
The French Impressionist and Modern painters, like Renoir, Monet and Matisse, developed highly organic variations on colors in nature. Developing a kitchen color pallette from any of Monet's "Waterlillies" series works particularly well, but if you have a favorite painting, you can use it to inspire your kitchen's color design. Matisse sometimes painted entire rooms with a series of murals with one predominant color. You can also paint your kitchen using the colors and color proportions of Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life), a warm exploration of leaf greens, yellows and slightly faded reds.
Colors From the Environment
Connecting the interior of the house to its environment through color always works well. If you have a small city apartment, use the kitchen area as the focus of a pallette drawn from your environment, including billboard colors, stainless steel skyscrapers and asphalt pavement. Your kitchen can reflect these colors with stainless steel appliances, black laminate cabinets and gray countertops or floor. For a more specific urban pallette for your kitchen, look out your kitchen window on a sunny day, a cloudy day or at night.
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