PAINT DILEMMAS…when one color won’t do the job.

Sometimes you have to 'think outside the box’ to come up with a color scheme that works with all the elements in a room.

Case in point, this kitchen had a lot of nice warm brown and tan colors in the main granite countertop (barely seen here). However, due to the cabinets being a light maple, they would appear washed out against the tan color of the walls that the client wanted for the rest of the kitchen and the adjoining dining and living room in the open plan. There was no good stopping point to paint the kitchen a different color from the other spaces.

Solution: I chose a rich brown color based on the deeper tones in the main granite and the darker island top, as well as the backsplash. I placed this just on the back walls above the maple cabinets, not as a typical accent wall, but to increase the contrast so the cabinets would show up. A few nice accents of color with lower contrast help to fill in the space above and pay tribute to colors in the adjacent rooms, tying the spaces together.