Kitchen Colors

by Destrie
(Lockport, LA, USA)

We recently purchased an older home that is engulfed in wood paneling. The kitchen has yellow striped paneling with dark (very ugly) cabinets. Today we bought paint to paint over the paneling in a brown color. It's called Butternut wood. It's sort of a medium brown.

The dilemma is the cabinets. My husband was thinking of painting them white since all of the trim in the room is white. We also have white appliances. They are brand new and came with the house so we have no reason to upgrade to stainless. Any suggestions? Thanks!!


HI Destrie,

I agree that matching the colors of the trim and cabinets to your appliances is a great idea to keep the uniformity of your kitchen. But too much white can also be overpowering. Using an Off-White for the cabinets and trim would keep the color theme but tone down the coldness that white can have.

You may also want to consider painting the face-frames and door frames of the cabinets white, while using a lighter coordinating color of the Butternut Wood for the drawer fronts and door panel inserts themselves. This will also keep the white in check and not too overpowering.

This can be time consuming though, as you will need to paint the door rails and styles first then mask off that area to paint the door inserts (or vise versa). Depending on the size of your kitchen you may want to only do the base cabinets or the uppers like this. You could try one door to see if that's something you would like.

What I like to do to get some perspective is to use the Behr website to get project ideas and to see how the colors all work together. They have a coordinated color swatch that has four separate colors that you can view in a virtual room, or you can upload your own picture.

Behr's website can be hard to navigate so it will take some time, but once you get the hang of it it's well worth it in my opinion. Simply start at the "Explore Color with ColorSmart" and in the "virtual color center" input your color of Butternut Wood. This will give you a great starting point on finding coordinating colors.

I like doing this to see how the colors all work together. Plus you can see how well you like the colors before buying a can of paint.

Without seeing your kitchen it's hard for me to suggest any more ideas but hopefully Behr's website can help you some more.

I recommend experimenting with different colors to see which ones work best for your taste's. The pint cans of paint are inexpensive and give you a great starting point.

Hopefully I was of some help and thanks for asking your question. If you need anymore help feel free to ask. When it's all done please come back and let us know how it went.

Thank You,
Toby