毎日の家の革新はひっくり返る

In Part 6 we completed the installation of the cabinets, lighting and counter top.

Today we would like to write about the importance of ensuring that the colour of the different materials used in a kitchen actually complement each other; in other words, colour coordination is just as important in the kitchen as it is in any part of the home.

To begin, here is a picture of the finished kitchen from the family room showing all the colours which you can refer to as we proceed in our discussion:

?Now, it was recommended to us by almost everyone in ‘the business’ to start with the flooring. So that is what we did. We had previous homes with just a little hardwood flooring which had been a very light shade. With the back of our home facing a forest we wanted to have a dark brown hardwood floor to help bring the?forest into our home and to give that richness which only dark hardwood can give.

Next, we needed to decide if we wanted the counter top or the cabinets to be the focal point of the kitchen. Once we saw the pricing of the solid wood cabinetry, we decided on the counter tops. Jim, our kitchen designer suggested we coordinate all three in our decision making……the flooring, cabinets and counters. He recommended that since we had our hearts set on dark hardwood flooring we go with a dark counter top and light cabinetry. This would, in Jim’s own words, make the kitchen ‘pop’.

We brought into our next meeting with Jim a sample of the hardwood we had ordered. We also of course brought in colour samples of the paint which would go on the kitchen and family room walls as well as the paint chip sample for that which would also go in the hallways adjacent to the kitchen.

Since our hardwood was a Jatoba Expresso we felt that the matching counter top should also be a very dark brown and settled on the Coffee Brown quartz counter.

Next, to make the counter top ‘pop’ we went with an off white, or to be more precise, Tuscan Canvas cabinetry. This is an MDF (Medium Density Fiber board) product which is an engineered wood product formed by breaking down softwood into wood fibers and combining it with wax and resin to form panels by applying very high temperatures and pressure during the manufacturing process.

We felt that this type of cabinetry would be a very nice complement to the flooring and counters which would remain the visual focal point of the kitchen.

For the sinks we had a decision to make based on our choices to date: brushed nickle or a type of sink to match the cabinetry. We chose the latter.

The back-splash was selected to?be similar in colour to?the cabinetry and thereby also complement, not detract from the darker colours as can be seen in the above picture.

The same approach was taken for the brushed nickle cabinet handles, in that all of the taps in the kitchen were also brushed nickle while the cabinet handles were sufficiently thin to blend into the background.

Lastly, don’t forget that the kitchen does not exist in isolation to the rest of the house. The colours and shades of the paint in the adjacent rooms / hallways should also blend in with the kitchen’s colour scheme. For us, we have a earthy tone to the colours in our home, so there was a nice match all around. The last picture below is the view from the family room where you can see the earthy green of the painted wall as well as the light brown (Platinum) of the paint on the hallway walls.

We hope you have enjoyed our take on coordinating the colours within the kitchen.

To continue with our 12 part series of articles on our kitchen remodeling experiences, simply select this link to Part 8.