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Happy Kitchen Project: Colour

Day 2 Happy Kitchen Project: Colour

Creating a kitchen that reflects who you are begins with color. Anyone who has had to pick colors knows this is easier said than done. Colors have hues and degrees of saturation. Fabrics are equally confusing as they come in endless colors and patterns.

So how does one find inspiration and pick a colour scheme for a kitchen you want to love and never want to leave?

Finding Inspiration:

There are many ways to finding inspiration when selecting a colour scheme. You may smile when you look at holiday photo of warm beaches, blue waters and bougainvillea.

Or perhaps you love a dress you once wore in your youth, or the colors of produce at the weekly farmers market, or the colour of your grandmother’s china.

Your inspiration may come from Pinterest or your best friends living room. What ever inspires you and makes you smile can be the basis of your kitchen colour palette.

I have my Inspiration so what’s next?

To demonstrate the process of finding inspiration and creating a visual palette we started with a tray and filled it with things that attracted me; a beautiful succulent plant, beach glass votives, colourful stones, and a flower.  It became readily apparent that the colours that attracted me were the colours of nature. Greens, blues, slates, sands were the colour theme that emerged.

Because the colours were similar in origin it became obvious I needed a highlight or accent colour to add a bit of drama to the tray. I went back to natural sources and picked up a yellow leaf, a red and a pink flower to test out how they looked with the rest of the colours in the tray. In the end I decided on the pink flower.

Next we took our tray to the nearest Benjamin Moore paint store to find paint chips that would work with our inspiration tray so we could create an actual paint chip palette with different shades of the colours we loved the most.

We literally held up our bits of inspiration to the colour swatch boards and pulled out colours we felt best matched the source materials. At this stage we are not looking for a perfect match, just to develop a coherent colour palette that evokes the look and feel of our inspirations.

Where to use the colours?

Take a look at your kitchen. Are the bones good? That is, do you like the colour of your walls? Your floors? Your cabinets? Your accessories? Take a really good look.

Remember you can make a room colourful without painting the walls. You can add your new colour scheme to your furniture, the curtains, the linens, the cupboards, the accessories or if you like, paint the walls. Presto you have a colorful room.

Examples of our Colour Palette in Kitchens

Have a look at some great examples of how our colour scheme has been used in some very happy kitchens from Pinterest.

As you can see, sometimes its just the walls that are painted. Sometimes its the cabinet fronts or the backs when the fronts are open. Other times, it’s the accessories or linens that are done in the colour scheme. Or it can be a beautiful arrangement of flowers to add hits of colour to add the ‘happy’.

There are many ways to use colour in your kitchen. Have fun, take a few chances, and share your happy kitchen project with us!!

Share with us on instagram with hashtag #happykitchenproject and tag us @designerscollective_ and @chewsylovers

We would love to share a few happy kitchens on our blogs in the next 30 days!

Tomorrow, Mandi from Chewsy Lovers will be posting from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We will post the link for her blog in the morning for all of you to read about her tips for a HAPPY KITCHEN!!