Kitchen & Bathroom Design Blog

Here is a new blog post from a guest author contributing to
Lang’s Kitchen & Bath’s website.  We hope you find this topic helpful!

Renovating your kitchen means changing your style and trying something new in the heart of your home. While it can be exciting, you might find it tricky to ensure everything matches and sticks to your budget.

Preparing your kitchen to be the best it can be can require your analysis. After all, the kitchen is supposed to be one of the most important places in the house—so it’s important to know you’re choosing your kitchen’s appearance in a thoughtful way.

7 Steps to a Complementary Kitchen

You want a kitchen that functions well and looks pleasing to all who enter. Luckily, finding the right balance between strong cabinets and beautiful countertops is simple once you know what to look for. By following these steps, you’re likely to find a suitable design for your renovated kitchen.

1. Come Up With a Palette

For a standard kitchen, you should look for a handful of colors you can pepper around the area. Try to stick to no more than four. Anything more than that might make your kitchen look busy or overwhelming.

In kitchens specifically, neutral and bright colors, like red, blue, and yellow, shine together. However, you shouldn’t put multiple bold hues together. Save the bright red and royal blue for another room — you’ll want to use a neutral base on areas like the countertops. A bold cabinet with a neutral countertop would look great!

2. Analyze Your Lighting

If you’re not planning on replacing your kitchen’s lighting fixtures, you should assess what type of light they give off. Warm light can make a color look totally different from how it looks under cool or natural light. Since it’s softer, it makes everything appear a bit more yellowish. Make sure you’re prepared for a color that may look different in natural lighting than under your kitchen’s lights.

Cool lighting is best for workspaces, where you need to see the details. Bright white light is perfect for a kitchen because you’re working in it, similar to how it functions well in an office. If you plan on purchasing a new light fixture, keep in mind that cooler lighting allows you to see the details of your work more easily.

3. Focus on Countertops

Your countertops will be the kitchen’s focal point, so it’s essential to match your cabinets to them, not the other way around. Before figuring out what color to paint your cabinets or choosing a type of wood, you need to look at what you want out of your countertops.

They would look best in a neutral color rather than something bright, particularly if you’re planning on having a bold or bright color for your cabinets. Picking a countertop pattern with multiple colors in it means you could use one of the additional colors as an accent somewhere else in your kitchen to tie everything together.

4. Choose Matching Backsplash

Your backsplash should complement your countertops, not your cabinets. Don’t choose a backsplash that looks too similar to your countertops, but consider one that features one or more of the colors in your color palette. If your countertops are simple, consider splurging on an exciting backsplash that can capture the eye.

Once you pick a backsplash that matches your countertops, it’s time to move on and find a color for the cabinets that complements the two of them.

5. Pick Simple Cabinets

When picking your cabinets, refer back to your color palette. Chances are good if you chose a neutral color for your countertops and backsplash, you’re going to want to pick a bold color for your cabinets. It’s a good idea for all of your cabinets to be the same color, but you can choose different shades for your top and bottom. If you have a kitchen island, you might also opt for a different shade for those cabinets.

If you’re opting for wood cabinets, you should pick a wood that complements your design. Birch is the most common type of wood cabinet, but it depends on the style of kitchen you have. Oak has a strong grain that can typically be seen through paint, so it’s often used in more traditional kitchens than modern ones.

6. Think of the Floor

Are you planning to redo your floor? While hardwood floors are great options for kitchens, they’re not the most common. Tile floors are resilient and perfect for kitchens, as they’re easy to clean and relatively water-resistant.

If you’re going with tile, you should find something that doesn’t clash with your cabinet and countertop design, but it should still stand out and provide some sort of contrast. The same goes with hardwood floors; if you plan to use natural wood, choose something that stands out from your cabinets but doesn’t create an eyesore appearance.

7. Do a Test Run

Once you have an idea of what you want for your kitchen, you just need to grab some samples and mix them. Analyze them under different conditions at different times of the day to get an accurate picture of how the colors will look under warm, cool, or natural lighting.

You should have a couple of hues in each color or different materials to mix and match ideas. You might end up with a combination of colors and patterns you’ve never thought of but end up loving. Trial and error are essential, but it’s important to conduct this last step in your own home so you can see how these colors look in the environment you plan to use them in.

Renovate Your Kitchen the Right Way

When renovating your kitchen, you’re tackling a major project that can change the center of your home for the better. In addition to upgrading the appliances that need it, you’ll likely be changing the color and material of your cabinets and countertops.

At first glance, it might be challenging to pinpoint a combination of designs you like that go well together. But when you break the project down piece by piece, it shouldn’t feel as overwhelming. The first step is finding out which style of countertop you like best. Once you’ve nailed down what design you want to cook on for years to come, the rest will be as easy as finding colors that go great with it.