Please help a young male with no color sense lol I recently bought a house that is ~60 years old and I am gutting it and starting over...kinda like flipping my own house I guess. I'm fine with all the construction and physical work but I have NO color coordination what so ever. I'm currently working in the kitchen and need some help. I've attached a couple pics to give you a layout idea. WE are going to stain the cabinets a mahogany but that is all we know. Would a taupe colored wall look good with a light floor and dark counter tops?
Color preference is a very personal thing. If not sure, go with more natural earthy tones. To make it a bit more dramatic, make one of the walls an accent wall by getting a darker tone of the first paint. The accent wall should not be your window or opposite of the window wall. Choose you paints by looking at your cabinets and floor materials next to the paint samples. This will help. Good luck! Katia p.s. Not sure how to attached pictures in this Forum... I can send you what I did at my place. [/url][/img]
Ok, we had planned on a medium dark cabinet...but as it turns out the cabinets did not stain very well at all. I think they are birch and just came out very grainy and uneven...here are a couple more pics of what we have done in the last couple days. Would white cabinets look good or should I just bite the bullet and buy new ones? Maybe a light oak or maple? As you can see in the 2nd picture, it seems there may be some residue that I missed when sanding...but not worrying about that, the stain still will not even up and is very grainy...some parts stained a deep brown while others you can barely tell there was stain applied
Wow, you are moving along! I see you painted the walls. The color looks a bit too dark. Is that what you were going for? It's difficult to make the judgment based on pics, but here is what I think. If you have small windows, it looks like you do, try to lighten up the wall color. Also, you were talking about the "light color floor"? It looks very dark on your pictures as well. But I love that tile! With that floor go with light cabinets for sure. White would be OK. Or a very light wood. You can also balance it all out with a better lighting in that room. If you need help with laying out the lighting, post your floor plan. Here are some images for you. The second from above has a dark floor and creamy white cabinets. The walls are actually white. Looks very nice. http://www.holtams.co.uk/modern%20wood%20kitchens.htm I just realized I can't attach pictures to the message, and I don't have any picture sharing yet. I have a bunch of pics I could send you if you want to see some colors ideas. Good luck! Katia
Well it is actually a fairly big kitchen (~350 sq ft), and the walls are not AS dark as they appear in the picture, but they are dark. here is the floor plan. I was thinking about doing track lighting with a can light over the sink and a small decorative trim piece between the upper cabinets
JT's kitchen project I tend to agree with Katia about the darkness of the colors for your kitchen. My thought would be to lighten your walls to the lighter tone in your floor tiles, use a more honey blond toned stained cabinets and granite counter tops that picks up some of the darker tones of the floor tile. If installing track lighting, make sure to use the proper bulbs for your ceiling heights. You will need to inform your lighting supplier of your ceiling heights and have them suggest what type of floods or spots to use so that you don't get that "spotty" look of a row of narrow light beams lining the floor. You'll want fairly even lighting and accents where the spots don't reach (under the wall cabinets) Don't forget that you may also use lighting above the wall cabinets where they can't be seen that can .bounce light off the ceiling You'll need some general overall lighting, some under-counter illumination and spot lights place so that you will not be in your own shadow while trying to prepare meals. If properly illuminated, your dark scheme as it stands could be very masculine, very sleek and very sexy especially if you juxtapose those dark tones with something like brushed stainless steel counter tops, brushed nickel track lighting fixtures, brushed steel plumbing fixtures and cabinet pulls...however, the lighting has to make sense to the tasks that will be performed. It a big challenge to guide you this way because there are so many questions that you would need to answer for us to give you responses that will give you what you'd like to achieve. I'm not sure if I helped or am breaking your bank! I hope you find something of use here. Good luck with your project. Jim
Sorry for the delay with the answer here. The plan is hard to read: windows are not shown, cabinets don't align, fridge is blocking the bedroom entrance... Maybe it's just the program you are using to draw. Jim gave some great pointers on the lighting though. Thanks Jim! Katia
