4 Tips For Picking The Right Kitchen Color Scheme

If it’s time for a kitchen home improvement project, one of the most visible and cost-effective ways to change the look of a kitchen is to think about a new color scheme. The kitchen is often one of the bigger rooms in modern homes today and gets a lot of use throughout the day, whether for actual meal preparation or just a place to talk and work. It is, in many ways, the heart of a home, so the color scheme plays an important role in setting the mood and tone of a home.

Here are a few tips to consider when deciding on the color scheme for your kitchen.

Neutral Colors Are Popular For A Reason

By far, the most common color scheme for a kitchen is one that plays it safe and chooses less intrusive, “neutral” color schemes. Neutral color schemes are, comparatively speaking, “desaturated,” so while they still have color, they are less bright and intense.

One of the primary reasons neutral color schemes are a perennial favorite in kitchens is that these colors don’t fight for attention with the light—natural or artificial—used in a kitchen. They also tend to make a kitchen feel more open and spacious, whereas more intense colors can feel confining.

Light vs. Dark Cabinets

Because cabinets take up so much of the space in a kitchen, color choice here can be important for determining a kitchen’s overall look and feel. As with neutral color schemes, choosing lighter colors for cabinets can make smaller spaces feel more open.

On the other hand, darker colors, while feeling more confining, are also more durable and easier to maintain. Dirt and other marks show up less easily on darker-colored cabinets, so for people who prefer not to clean cabinet faces often, darker colors are a lower maintenance choice.

Your Lighting Situation

Another important factor for color scheme choice is what kind of lighting your kitchen has. Once again, following the rules of light/neutral versus dark/saturated, a kitchen that doesn’t get much light will feel darker and even more confined with darker, vibrant colors. On the other hand, lighter neutral colors can add a greater sense of space to a kitchen without much sunlight and with only one ceiling light to work by during the evenings.

If you get a lot of daylight in your kitchen, your kitchen home improvement may benefit from less neutral colors, but this is up to you.

The Rest Of Your Home

A final factor to consider for your kitchen home improvement project is how your kitchen will fit in with the rest of the home. This is especially important if you have an open-plan kitchen that connects directly with other rooms in the house. For example, if you’ve got a modern living room adjacent to the kitchen, with a lot of lighter colors, choosing a rustic kitchen with more saturated browns and other natural wood-grain colors will be a stark color clash. Choose color schemes that complement the rest of your home’s look.

If you’re looking for professional help with your kitchen home improvement project, contact us today.