The modern kitchen is both a gathering place for friends and family and a place to prepare food. As such, you’ll want to create the right kitchen environment for your gatherings. One of the important ways to do this is through color. Whether you want your kitchen to feel light and airy, or small, cozy and intimate, the right choice of color will go a long way toward creating the right atmosphere.

Different colors have different effects on different people. Red will affect you differently than green. Likewise, blue can have a different effect on you than it does on your neighbor. When choosing your color scheme for your kitchen, you have to make the decisions about which colors to use. It is your kitchen, and you will be spending most of your time in it, so you have to decide which colors match your wishes for your kitchen. These are only guidelines in the choice of colors, the final decision will be yours.

Think about whether you want a cozy and intimate kitchen or a more open feel. The correct color choices can help. Darker shades will visually shrink a room, making it feel smaller and more intimate. Whites, light yellow, and other light colors can help visually open up the space and make a small room feel bigger and more open.

Earth tones are good options for decorating the kitchen. Tans and browns can help ground your kitchen and create a sense of calm and closeness. Earth tones are generally neutral colors and will go well with various other colors as accent colors in cabinets, trim, and kitchen décor.

Black should be used only for accents and not as the main color in your kitchen. Black tends to absorb heat, which can make the kitchen unbearably hot. Black can be used for an accent, especially if it is offset by white, which will balance the black and reflect, rather than absorb heat.

Orange is commonly associated with food and is therefore a good color choice for a kitchen, either as a main color or as an accent. Orange tends to make you hungry, making it a good choice for a kitchen color. Blue, on the other hand, tends to suppress hunger. Because of this, you may want to eliminate, or at least minimize, blue in your kitchen.

Red should be avoided in the kitchen. Red tends to evoke feelings of warmth, which in an already hot room, such as the kitchen, is not a good thing. Red can work well as an accent if used sparingly and offset by cooler colors in other parts of the room.

You have several areas of the kitchen that you need to coordinate when painting or remodeling. It is certainly not necessary that everything be the same color, but it is better that all the colors complement each other, rather than conflict. A color scheme of two or three colors will work well. The largest area of ​​color in your kitchen will be the walls and ceiling. This will be your primary color that everything else will coordinate with. If you are painting the walls a dark color, you may want to leave the ceiling blank, which will help prevent the room from feeling too small. The cabinets, if you choose to paint over a wood finish, should contrast with the walls, but at the same time, not collide with them. Once you’ve painted your walls and cabinets, you can choose another color to match the first two to use for trim and accents.

Repainting is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to give your kitchen a new look. However, before you begin, take some time to plan your color scheme. A well thought-out color scheme will help you enjoy your kitchen even more.