Designing Kitchens: Planning a Color Scheme

Color Scheme 1: The plan begins with the choice of three preferred colors—blue, white, and natural, light-colored wood — and the desire for a bright, cheerful kitchen. First a light oak cabinet style is chosen. Next, cobalt blue is tried on counter tops, backsplashes, and narrow window blinds, along with medium-blue vinyl for the floor. Appliances, table top, walls, and ceiling are white. The cobalt blue counters seem too overpowering and the medium-blue floor looks like it might be dull, so another scheme is tried.

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Choosing Color Families

How you select and apply color in your kitchen can make a big difference in your design. To select a color family (yellows, blues, greens, etc.), first take another look at the structural characteristics of your kitchen—its size, shape, and so on. Are there any features that you want to emphasize or minimize? Is there a dining nook you want to accent? Is the room relatively too long or too squat? Color can be used to compensate for architectural features you don’t like and to accent those you do.

Dark and light colors. Applying the principles discussed in the section on “Contrast”, you can combine dark and light colors to achieve specific effects. For example, a dark color will visually lower a ceiling, whereas a light color will heighten it. Strips of color such as border tiles or wood trim used vertically will draw the eye up; horizontal strips will widen or lengthen the room. If you have some kitchen element you want to feature, you can use more intense colors to call it out; or you can minimize an area or element by using softer colors. Bear in mind that an intense color is not necessarily dark—bright yellow can be just as intense and used in the same way as cobalt blue, for example, Warm and cool colors. Different color families have distinct characteristics. Colors in the blue family, or those with underlying blue tones, are cool. They tend to re cede, pushing walls and surfaces outward and making a room look larger. Colors in the red/yellow/orange families, or those with underlying red tones, are warmer and tend to advance, bringing surfaces forward and making a room appear smaller. If you have a tiny kitchen, you may want to use cooler, lighter colors unless you want to emphasize the compact nature of the room. In the same way, you can use warmer, darker colors to visually reduce the size of a large kitchen, or cool colors to expand its apparent size even further. The effect of colors in the middle ranges depends largely on how much blue or yellow they contain. Blues and greens with a lot of yellow can appear warm, and reds or yellows with a great deal of blue in them will seem cooler. Even whites, grays, browns, and blacks can appear either cool or warm depending on the amount of yellow or blue they contain.

Quality of light. After considering the structural effects you want to achieve with color, look at the quality of natural light in your kitchen. Where does this light come from? Is it cool northern or eastern light, or warm light from the south or west? Do you want to emphasize or de-emphasize the quality of that light? Cool colors in a room flooded with southern light may offset the heat of such light, whereas warm or bright colors may intensify it. If your kitchen receives northern light, cool colors can appear even cooler, and dull colors even duller. Warmer colors can be used to counterbalance this cool natural light. You can also use the principles of contrast to create another kind of liveliness in an otherwise dull room.

Personal preferences. Another decision regarding color families can be made with a quick “yes” or “no” answer to a simple question: Do you want your kitchen to have the same colors used in adjacent rooms? If you do, you’ve already narrowed your choices down to a specific range; if this is not a priority, your choices may be wider. Further, when you were first considering the design and style of your kitchen, you probably defined a feeling you wanted your kitchen to have—warm and cozy, cool and sleek, or perhaps a blend of both. With the characteristics of warm and cool colors in mind, you can choose a color family that will enhance this desired effect. Even if none of these factors suggest an approach to color, you may have your heart set on a particular kitchen element—a special wallpaper, natural wood cabinets, or an antique cherry table—that you can use as a basis for a color approach.

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Color Scheme 2: The light oak cabinets remain, and medium blue is used on the walls. White tiles now cover the counters, backsplashes, and floor. Blue blinds are re placed by white shutters, and a wood table top re places the white one. Although the floor plan looks much brighter, the blue walls are a bit dreary. White seems to be a better choice for the second major color. The tile patterns on counters and floor look too busy, so further adjustments are made.

Color Schemes

As a color direction suggests itself from the considerations outlined above, you’ll want to develop an overall scheme. As a general guideline, you can approach your color scheme in one of two ways: Use one color family throughout the entire kitchen, or use one color family on major surfaces and another on minor surfaces and elements. In the first approach, you might choose to treat all areas in white or in shades of tan and light wood tones. The effect in both cases is essentially monochromatic, giving a feeling of peace and security or of sleek sophistication. In the second approach, you may choose to use blue on the surfaces you want to feature and white on background elements and surfaces. Or you may use wood tones as well as blue on major surfaces, supported by white on minor ones. The effect in these cases is generally rich, lively, and bright, Simply by looking at color schemes in other kitchens, you can get an idea of which approach appeals to you—monochromatic or major/minor.

Developing a color scheme. With a general approach in mind, begin to plan out your scheme. Start with some thing you want to feature. If it’s the cabinets, start with those; if it’s the cozy eating nook, start there. Or if it’s the wallpaper you love, start with that. Then play. Use your elevation sketches and floor plans to try different combinations. Use pastel chalks, crayons, colored pencils, inks, or felt pens to color in copies of your plans. Get paint chips from paint stores, and play with various combinations. If you’re using a monochromatic approach, try various tints and shades of your color family on horizontal surfaces—floors, counters, ceilings—and another on vertical surfaces—walls, cabinets, appliances, and trim. Designers commonly choose the color for vertical surfaces first. Then they’ll use that same color one tone lighter on ceilings and one tone darker on trim. If you’re using a major/minor scheme, you may have a wallpaper or flooring pattern that has several colors in it. Pick out one of the colors; try it first on major surfaces and then on minor ones. Combine different tints or shades of each color on different surfaces to see which combinations you like best.

Because appliances are such a major item in a kitchen, their color can be crucial to your overall scheme. For the past two decades the basic appliance colors have been white, gold, avocado, and a copper brown, but this has begun to change: Commonly available colors now include almond and a chocolate brown, and finishes include black glass, stainless steel, and chrome. Try different colors on appliances. See how they look against cabinet colors. Perhaps you’ll decide that white or almond would be easier on the eye than a colored appliance; or that a huge, black commercial range will completely dominate a wall that is already dark, whereas a commercial gas cooktop in stainless could lighten things up. Because sleek, black-fronted appliances create very bold accents in your kitchen, they should be used with discretion and only as an integral part of your color scheme. Some manufacturers provide kits for dishwashers and refrigerators that will hold insert panels, which match cabinet fronts. And finally, you can consider taking an old or new appliance to an auto-body paint shop for a custom color.

With all your various kitchen surfaces and elements, the idea is to keep playing with color combinations until you come up with a scheme that feels right. Look again at the photographs in this guide and in your notebook. See how color has been used in these kitchens, and use these visual guidelines to aid your own choices. Then let your design goals, your chosen color scheme, and your own internal sense of harmony and balance guide your decisions.