Month: March 2016

Day: March 8, 2016

Match Colors to Lighting in Your Kitchen

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The kitchen is one of the most active and important rooms within your house—one that gets quite a bit of attention when it comes to home makeovers. You’re in and out of the kitchen constantly. Between preparing meals each day or just grabbing a quick snack, it seems like you end up in the kitchen more than any other room. With this much foot traffic, it needs to be a room that looks decent and represents your home properly.

Lighting can play a big role in helping this come to fruition. Lighting also plays a big role in how your color scheme will set the mood for the room. Kitchens are meant to be inviting rooms—they entice the appetite and help you to relax and unwind from your day.

Let’s illustrate how light can play a role in making kitchens stand out.

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Take the photo above for example (source: homedepot.com). Notice how drastically the look of the room can change, just from simply modifying the lighting that you have in the room. It can have just this same effect on your colors, so bear this in mind as you pick out your new color scheme.

Grey and Brown

Greys-and-Browns

                       (source: glidden.com)

These subtle and calm colors give a very contemporary feel to the room and make it feel very fresh and new. The light paint colors accented with darker brown wood cabinets give the room a look that goes very well with most other color schemes that you could hope to incorporate around the house. To get the best look for this type of palette, a Soft White bulb is your best bet. It gives off a warm and yellowish glow that will help accent your darker shades and give them an even calmer feel.

Green and Silver

Green-and-Silver

(Source: glidden.com)

This trend is a bit more on the retro/modern side of things, but it’s been making a recent comeback lately. With people desiring looks from a simpler time, these shades give just that. Varying from shades as dark as pine green to the ever famous “avocado appliance green,” this palette can get quite varied. It works great with stainless steel appliances as well, which help to pull in the greys in this scheme well. As for your bulb choice, a Bright White bulb will be your best choice. Like the name suggests, it gives off a cool white glow to it, which enhances greens and makes other cool colors in the room crisper.

Black, White, and Vibrant

Black-White-and-Vibrants

(Source: glidden.com)

Black and White are the ever fashionable palette, never out of style but never quite at the forefront of it either. These are however, mainstay colors for the kitchen. A more contemporary trend going on right now, though, is taking these two colors and mixing them with vibrant colors like bright candy apple reds or lime greens to create dramatic pop effects in the kitchen and really amp up the mood in the room. For this particular palette, I shouted out red since it’s a popular color within kitchens due to its intrinsic ability to promote hunger. When using these types of colors, like with all vibrant colors, I would suggest a Daylight bulb. This bulb gives off the most natural looking light and helps promote crisp, clean colors which are not changed by the tint of your bulb and show them in their purest forms.