Kitchen Paint Colors to Match Oak or White Cabinets
Choosing the best kitchen paint colors involves three important factors: the color of your kitchen cabinets (oak or white), recognizing the undertones in your cabinets, flooring, and furniture, and coordinating a balanced color palette.
You can pick your favorite colors or try to mimic photos of other kitchens, but you'll likely be disappointed by the results. Read on to learn what color to paint your kitchen walls for stunning success.
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Kitchen Paint Colors with Oak Cabinets
First, decide whether you want to accent the color of your wood cabinets or minimize them so they blend into the background.
How to Highlight Your Oak Cabinets
To accentuate the look of warm oak, use cool kitchen paint colors. Consider shades of blue, green, or purple.
Or use neutral colors with blue, green, or purple undertones. Choose a paint color several shades lighter or darker than your cabinets.
Gray paint colors are the hottest trend in interior painting, but if you want your oak cabinets to look their best, do not choose kitchen wall colors with gray undertones.
How to Soften the Look of Your Oak Cabinets
Before choosing kitchen paint colors, determine the undertones of your oak cabinet finish. The most common are yellows, oranges, and reds.
To minimize or blend the look of your oak cabinets, use kitchen paint colors in browns, beige, or creams.
Select colors with similar undertones as in your cabinet finish and choose slightly lighter or darker shades of paint.
Updating Oak Cabinets is Easy
Since you're painting the kitchen walls, give your cabinets some TLC, too.
- Add or update handles, pulls, and knobs.
- Choose a unified color palette for kitchen decor. A variety of colors, metals, and textures makes the room appear cluttered. Most times, a neutral theme is best for oak cabinets. Some greenery gives the room energy.
- Add crown molding (the crown that sits on top of your cabinets) and a valance (a strip of wood attached to the bottom of your upper cabinets). Ask us about our carpentry services.
- Install new lighting and fixtures.
- Give your kitchen a makeover by painting the cabinets and the walls.
White Walls, White Cabinets: Gorgeous!
Kitchen paint colors in shades of white give the room a clean, spacious feel. Painting kitchen cabinets white on white walls complement each other, no matter the shade or sheen.
You can choose bright white cabinets against warm white walls, or off-white against cool white, for instance.
The challenge in choosing white kitchen paint colors, whether on the walls or the cabinets, are the undertones. Whites come in tints of almost every other color including beige, cream, gray, blue, green, pink, and purple.
White paint colors also reflect surrounding colors. Consider the undertones of your flooring, accent walls or decor, furniture, light fixtures, and even the view out the kitchen window.
Here are a few of our favorite white kitchen paint colors.
Sherwin Williams Pure White
Pure White is on the cooler side of the palette, but it is soft enough to pair with nearby warm or cool colors. Use Pure White on your walls (or cabinets), and paint the ceiling, trim, and doors a different sheen of this same color.
Sherwin Williams Extra White
Extra White mixes best with a cooler color scheme. It's crisp and contemporary. Again, use a different sheen of Extra White on trim, ceilings, and cabinets.
Sherwin Williams Alabaster
Alabaster is your warm, cozy white as kitchen paint colors go. It's almost off white with a creamy feel (without yellow undertones). Alabaster looks gorgeous paired with either a warm or cool decor color palette.
Kitchen Paint Colors that Compliment White Cabinets
Light Gray Walls, White Cabinets
A light shade of gray looks clean and modern on your kitchen walls, just not as bright as white.
Lazy Gray is a good example.
Yummy Dark Brown Kitchen Walls
Delicious shades of dark brown on the walls accent the clean look of white cabinets.
But be sure to match brown kitchen paint colors with the undertones and shades of existing browns such as flooring and furniture.
Consider Bitter Chocolate or Chocolate Powder.
Dark Blue in the Kitchen? Stylish!
In a kitchen with excellent lighting (both artificial and natural), a dark blue paint on the walls boasting white cabinets is elegance defined.
You can also do the reverse: white walls with dark blue painted cabinets. These two colors are a perfect balance of contrast and compliment.
Blue is a versatile accent color, too. You could paint the kitchen walls a light gray, the cabinets white, and the island navy. As always, be aware of the undertones in your paint color choices, flooring, and surrounding decor.
Choose lush blues in navy, cobalt, indigo, or denim.
Greige Painted Walls
Greige is a gray paint color with beige undertones that radiate warmth. Crushed Ice is a wonderful example of Greige that pairs well with white cabinets.
Warm Up to Beige Walls and White Cabinets
The right beige tone contrasts white cabinets to create a soft, warm, and welcoming space.
Keep the decor in neutrals and balance dark and light colors. We like Classic Light Buff.
Appliances
Do You have Black Kitchen Appliances?
White walls, white cabinets, and black appliances rarely go well together. The contrast is too high. It makes your kitchen appear cluttered and small.
But you can make it work by balancing the color palette. Here are some ideas.
- You can do it with medium to dark countertops and a darker backsplash. Then your cabinets are the only lighter focal point in the space. Choose lighter kitchen paint colors for the walls to balance the color scheme.
- Paint the lower set of cabinets, and the island if you have one, a medium to dark gray.
- Install a backsplash that's similar to the color of your cabinets, like a white subway tile, to even out the light and dark shades in the room.
- Paint all of your cabinetry medium to dark gray.
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Kitchen Paint Colors Give a Home Your Personality
You'll want to envision how different colors will look on your walls, in different lighting, and with the rest of your house. You can place color samples from paint stores against your walls, but the swatches are small and they aren't made with actual paint.
To get a better idea of how kitchen paint colors will look against your wood cabinets, we recommend Samplize. These large peel-n-stick samples are made with genuine manufacturer paint.
You spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking, cleaning, entertaining, and making memories. Whether you have oak cabinets or white cabinets, choosing complimentary kitchen paint colors for the walls, ceiling, doors, and trim brings your kitchen to life. And at a fraction of the cost of kitchen makeovers.
Contact Kimberly Painting for a free consultation.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Kitchen paint color FAQs
To highlight oak, use cool colors like blue, green, or purple, or neutrals with those undertones. To soften oak, use browns, beige, or creams with similar undertones. Avoid wall colors with gray undertones.
A few of our favorites are Sherwin Williams Pure White, Extra White, and Alabaster.
White walls, white cabinets, and black appliances rarely go well together because the contrast is too high. Balance it with darker countertops and backsplash, gray lower cabinets or island, or a backsplash similar to your cabinet color.
We recommend Samplize, large peel-n-stick samples made with genuine manufacturer paint, instead of small paint store swatches.
Still have a question? Call (770) 561-4825
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