What Do Color Experts Have to Say About Painting Your Kitchen?
Have you ever stepped into a kitchen and dreaded doing anything there?
Hopefully that wasn’t YOUR kitchen…but it probably was.
In that moment, you might have felt the claustrophobia of trying to wash your dishes in a single bowl sink…or you might have flinched as you looked at the tiny counterspace available around your countertop appliances…
Or maybe you were just SICK of looking at the dated wall color!
Whatever remodel you’re due for, your kitchen colors could make ALL THE DIFFERENCE! They could make stepping into your kitchen totally irresistible.
Getting it right with kitchen painting starts with picking the right colors…for every part of your kitchen.
Get ready to walk through the best practices when painting your kitchen…
Picking The Right Kitchen Colors: 3 Things to Consider
To paint your whole kitchen, you need to take three things into consideration:
1: Overall Aesthetics
To top your list, consider the overall aesthetics of your kitchen.
When you step into a kitchen for the first (or fiftieth) time, does it look pleasing to you, overall? Do all the colors blend together to form an aesthetically pleasing scene? This is the number-one thing to consider when selecting colors for your kitchen.
To help direct you, consider colors that are not too starkly different from the colors you used in other parts of your home. Lee Wallender, a home improvement expert and blogger at The Spruce, suggests that neutrals of varying gradations are a good option for many home kitchens.
When thinking of your own aesthetic pleasure, you need to think of the main color you want to highlight or use as an accent in your kitchen…this will shape the mood you want to set, as well as the other colors you could pair with your selected color.
2: Kitchen Type and Uses
The type of kitchen you have is also crucial when considering the colors you want to select.
What do you primarily use your kitchen for? Are you just starting out as a family? Do you have children? Or is it a household of grown-ups? Will you be cooking for many people? All these things matter when considering the colors to pick for your kitchen.
3: The Feel You Want Your Kitchen to Exude
A Kendra Cherry article recently broke down how colors have such a HUGE influence on our feelings and perceptions. Therefore, the perception you want to exude matters when considering the colors for your kitchen.
Confused about colors? Here are 3 paint colors that will never go out of style!
What do YOU want people to feel when they step into your kitchen? Do you want to make it hospitable? Welcoming? Should it positively invite people to cool? Should it be calm and soothing? The right mix and gradation of colors can help you pass these feelings on to anyone who steps into your kitchen.
Picking The Right Paint: What Should You Consider?
You know that there are different types of paint…do you know what each type’s ideal use is?
If you’re considering painting your kitchen, you should know this.
It’s simple: your kitchen has differing surfaces, from the walls to the cabinets to the floors, and each surface has a recommended type of paint for it.
When thinking of painting your kitchen, you need to consider each surface, its uses, and the best type of paint finish…beyond just selecting the best color.
Keep reading to learn the little known tips on paint…
Kitchen Walls
Your kitchen walls will have little to no contact with water (except near the faucet, and when you clean). You can consider using latex paint for the walls, but even then, latex paint comes in different finishes. If you’ll be doing a lot of cooking, choose gloss finishes as they’re easiest to clean. That grease will fly further than you realize!!
Kitchen Cabinets and Other Woodwork
There are some natural wood cabinets you should never paint. It’s not so much about the wood type, though, as much as it’s about the quality.
Custom cabinets stained beautifully should never be painted over.
That said, even custom cabinets aren’t always solid wood cabinets in beautiful condition…which means you can consider oil paints for your cabinets and other woodwork.
Why oil paints? Oil paint is largely water resistant, because cabinets get damp more often than you realize…and water damage to wood is irreversible.
Picking The Right Paint Finish: Everything to Know
Then, of course, there’s the endless options in paint finish.
The paint finish you choose for any latex-based paint will have as big an impact on the overall aesthetics of your kitchen as your paint color!
This decision has to be balanced with practicality. If you will use your kitchen a LOT, consider which surfaces will get the most grease, wear and tear…and how easy it needs to be to clean it. Because while some paint finishes are easy to scrub clean, others are not.
According to Hadley Mendelsohn, House Beautiful Senior Editor and Interior Design Expert, the characteristics of each finish help determine the surfaces it can be used on. For example, you use your kitchen cabinets more often than your kitchen breakfast nook, so, use high-gloss for your cabinets and doors and semi-gloss for your walls.
Perhaps planning to paint your kitchen is starting to look like a bigger to-do than you realized. Perhaps you can even imagine postponing your plans…but making your paint selections is the first empowering step.
Then, once the first step’s out of the way…WHAT’S NEXT?
Hiring a contractor!
We’ve provided a valuable resource on questions you NEED to ask before hiring a contractor…
Download the ebook now! Or contact us to speak with our very own color expert, Robin Burrill.
