Color Scheme Me!
September 23, 2018 3:06 PM Subscribe
I've moved into a furnished apartment with an open floor plan, and the style and cabinet hues in the kitchen area don't gel well with the trim and furnishings in the living/dining area. Can you suggest one or more paint colors that might look okay in both areas and/or with each other?
The primary living area is a big open rectangle with the kitchen on one side, dining room in the middle, and living room on the other end. All three are pretty well demarcated architecturally from each other, but all are very visible no matter your perspective. The kitchen is quite modern, with dark brown/almost black cool-toned cabinets, some sort of dark mottled stone counter-tops, a good bit of frosted glass, and stainless steel appliances and trim. The living room and dining room furniture is all somewhat old-fashioned dark cherry wood with red undertones, all with elaborate brassy gold knobs and handles that I plan to replace with simple neutral stuff from amazon, and the upholstered furniture is dark brown or cream. All the door and window trim and baseboards are simple and in a natural wood that's approximately the same as the furniture but more brown and less red. The flooring throughout is light colored stone tiles, somewhat marbled cream and beige. There are balcony doors at the living room end that face west, and indirect sunlight from a few smaller windows on the kitchen end.
I'd like to paint the walls. The problems is that the colors that seem like they would be pleasant against the warm reddish furnishings in the living/dining rooms are not those that would look good with the cool and silver stuff in the kitchen. The person who was here before me did the living and dining sections in a deep red and the kitchen in teal - both looked nice if you were only looking at that section on its own, but clashed awfully with each other when you looked at the entire space. When he left, the whole place was repainted in a sort of muddy yellowish white that doesn't bring out the best in anything.
I put a lot of thought into painting an apartment once before with subpar results, so this time I'd like to consult those with a better eye than mine. I've been looking at palates at Design Seed and like the idea of choosing a few colors (including for the rest of the apartment) that are expert-selected to go well together, but can't figure out how to confront the open floorplan problem. Painting is cheap and I'll only be here for a couple years so I'm willing to take some risks, but I do want to approach this better than I did at my last place. Hivemind, can you help?
The primary living area is a big open rectangle with the kitchen on one side, dining room in the middle, and living room on the other end. All three are pretty well demarcated architecturally from each other, but all are very visible no matter your perspective. The kitchen is quite modern, with dark brown/almost black cool-toned cabinets, some sort of dark mottled stone counter-tops, a good bit of frosted glass, and stainless steel appliances and trim. The living room and dining room furniture is all somewhat old-fashioned dark cherry wood with red undertones, all with elaborate brassy gold knobs and handles that I plan to replace with simple neutral stuff from amazon, and the upholstered furniture is dark brown or cream. All the door and window trim and baseboards are simple and in a natural wood that's approximately the same as the furniture but more brown and less red. The flooring throughout is light colored stone tiles, somewhat marbled cream and beige. There are balcony doors at the living room end that face west, and indirect sunlight from a few smaller windows on the kitchen end.
I'd like to paint the walls. The problems is that the colors that seem like they would be pleasant against the warm reddish furnishings in the living/dining rooms are not those that would look good with the cool and silver stuff in the kitchen. The person who was here before me did the living and dining sections in a deep red and the kitchen in teal - both looked nice if you were only looking at that section on its own, but clashed awfully with each other when you looked at the entire space. When he left, the whole place was repainted in a sort of muddy yellowish white that doesn't bring out the best in anything.
I put a lot of thought into painting an apartment once before with subpar results, so this time I'd like to consult those with a better eye than mine. I've been looking at palates at Design Seed and like the idea of choosing a few colors (including for the rest of the apartment) that are expert-selected to go well together, but can't figure out how to confront the open floorplan problem. Painting is cheap and I'll only be here for a couple years so I'm willing to take some risks, but I do want to approach this better than I did at my last place. Hivemind, can you help?
I think a coral, navy/cobalt and mustard would work well with the colors you've got going on. If it were my place, I might do coral for the living area, blue for the dining area and mustard for the kitchen. The reasoning is that adding yellow to the kitchen will help tie it in with the warm tones in floor and the wood and upholstry in the other rooms. Meanwhile deep blue in the dining area would play off the cool colors in the kitchen. Coral is warm and cheery and I think looks good with brown, beige and grey as well as mustard and deep blue.
I love lots of color, but if all that seems a bit much, you could also go with one color for one of the three areas and a classic cream or white for the rest.
posted by prewar lemonade at 4:04 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
I love lots of color, but if all that seems a bit much, you could also go with one color for one of the three areas and a classic cream or white for the rest.
posted by prewar lemonade at 4:04 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'd not paint the seperate areas at all but go for one background neutral color, likely an off white. Then for accents mustard or bamboo green or bright white. Basically it's all slightly warm (very slightly) but neutral with no gray and no blue undertones.
Then hang some big art.
posted by fshgrl at 4:28 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
Then hang some big art.
posted by fshgrl at 4:28 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm with fshgrl. I'd paint a neutral like Navaho White, then use bright accent colors in pillows, throw rugs, and art.
posted by BlueHorse at 5:39 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by BlueHorse at 5:39 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'm normally a crazy color person and would want to a bunch of saturated jeweltones all over the place, but in this particular instance I agree, you should pick one neutral background for everything, and demarcate the different areas with accent colors and soft furnishings. Because of the glossiness of your kitchen surfaces, do a warmer neutral so they'll take on a warmer hue and clash less with the rest of the space. A light cream with buttery undertones - avoid mushroomy taupes, as those read cool. I wonder if the current wall color was an attempt at this, but they went too dark and muddy?
Then have fun with bright curtains and couch blankets and art. It would be nice to cluster analogous hues to the different rooms, so maybe a lot of your kitchen accessories are red, the dining room has a rust colored table runner and pumpkin colored seat cushions, the living room has a mustardy throw blanket and on-trend yellow and grey curtains on the balcony doors. Or maybe do lemongrass and lime greens in the kitchen, soft blue landscape art in the dining room, rich purple rug in the living room. Not like, a strict rule or anything, but by clustering the color accents it will demarcate the spaces without breaking it up in a claustrophobic way.
posted by Mizu at 10:31 PM on September 23, 2018
Then have fun with bright curtains and couch blankets and art. It would be nice to cluster analogous hues to the different rooms, so maybe a lot of your kitchen accessories are red, the dining room has a rust colored table runner and pumpkin colored seat cushions, the living room has a mustardy throw blanket and on-trend yellow and grey curtains on the balcony doors. Or maybe do lemongrass and lime greens in the kitchen, soft blue landscape art in the dining room, rich purple rug in the living room. Not like, a strict rule or anything, but by clustering the color accents it will demarcate the spaces without breaking it up in a claustrophobic way.
posted by Mizu at 10:31 PM on September 23, 2018
I plugged your existing colours (Dk brown, dk red, wood toned and cream) into this site, with a spot left open for your accent colour - I think a muted duck-egg blue would be lovely, but if any of the rooms are north-facing, a deep mauve would also work really nicely to my eye.
Why not play around with it a bit and see what looks good to you.
posted by greenish at 12:38 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
Why not play around with it a bit and see what looks good to you.
posted by greenish at 12:38 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by signal at 4:01 PM on September 23, 2018