E57 – How to Choose Kitchen Colours - Kitchen Design Essentials

In this episode of the Kitchen Design Essentials Season, Frances chats through how to choose your colours for your kitchen – and she’s certainly encouraging you to use colour – if you love it!

She walks you through how to determine ‘what comes first’ when creating your design scheme and runs through popular combinations. Finally, she gives some great advice and tips on decorating your kitchen, and how to make it your own and give it some personality.

SHOWNOTES:

Your kitchen does not have to match everything else in the home. For instance, if you are using a particular tile in the bathroom, you don’t necessarily have to bring that across to the kitchen. Make your kitchen a unique space!

• Have a consistent colour tone to create continuity and flow. For example, if you have a warm home, you need to make sure that you also use warm coloured materials.
• Warm tones = Beige
• Cool tones= Greys
• When thinking about the tone for your home, think about the colors you naturally gravitate to and often it’s the colours you wear.
• For Open plan, you need to coordinate the style of your Kitchen and colour with the rest of the home. For example, a country style kitchen in a modern home will not work.
• If there isn’t consistency throughout the whole home, it will not feel or look right.

Choosing material and their colours

• Start with the floor – Everything gets built up from the floor. For instance, if you’ve got a timber floor, are you going to have timber cabinetry that matches the floor or are you going to create a contrast?
• Choose your leading piece and select other materials around that piece
• • You can choose the colour and design of your kitchen based on your Splashback tile, cabinetry colour (eg. apple green) or natural stone feature.
  • Don’t start with your paint colour! There’s over 10,000 to choose from.
  • Choose something that you love. Everything will go out of date except the things that you love the most- material, tile, colour or shape
  • When building her Forever Home, Frances used Patricia Urquiola tiles that she had loved for years, for her splashback. It then became her leading piece and she designed her kitchen around it.
• Dark or light cabinetry? An all white kitchen can be clinical – A safe option when you are not sure what goes with what, but it is uninteresting unless you're going to brighten it up with something else.
• • Choose off white or warm grey. We have our go-to – not quite grey and not yellow based either. Work with warm and cool interiors.
  • Add texture, shape or colour to break it up – generally in the splashback or benchtop that has movement in it.
• Create contrast – with benchtop and cabinetry, or with splashback.
• • Eg. Light cabinetry and dark benchtop or vice versa
• Sleek and sophisticated – less is more. For instance, Dark or timber cabinetry with the benchtop and splashback the same.
• • Use Maximum of 3 materials.
• Timber in a kitchen
• • Timber is a sustainable material which is quite popular at the moment.
  • Gives an organic feeling which is difficult to replace.
  • Natural timber comes with a premium price compared to veneer.
  • If you have timber cabinetry overhead, then you may want to use a contrasting material such as aa plain cabinetry underneath or vice versa. Keep in mind that the timber underneath needs to work with any timber floor.
  • All timber finish can be paired with light or dark benchtop, just make sure that the benchtop coordinates back to the timber kitchen.
  • Can also have a timber benchtop with plain cabinetry or a timber benchtop with coloured cabinetry.
  • Use timber handles as an accent
  • Timber floating shelves as an accent.
  • Avoid grey based timbers – They are artificial and don’t look real. It will date because it’s not a natural timber colour.
• Combine cool tones using other materials, rather than using grey in the timber. Avoid mixing different types of timber because it will become too busy. Stick with one.
• • My preference is to contrast the timber floor with any timber cabinetry – if in doubt, have the timber cabinetry overhead.
  • Maximum 3-4 different materials.
  • • Eg benchtop, cabinetry, splashback and accent material or 2nd cabinetry colour instead of accent colour.
• How to bring in colour
• • An easy and obvious way is adding it in the Splashback– able to change relatively easily
  • Cabinetry – Avoid trends and choose the color that you really love. If you stick with the colour that you gravitate into, you will never get tired of it.
  • Benchtop – natural stone or otherwise