#Paint Color Ideas for Kitchen and Adjoining Dining Room

Adjoined kitchens and dining rooms present challenging painting opportunities.

Appetite Appeal

Kitchen and dining areas involve food, so choosing appetite-stimulating color schemes is one way to narrow color choice. Warm colors in the yellow/orange/red range promote appetite while blue/green colors suppress it. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy a blue or green kitchen or dining room, but you may want to add warmer elements to both rooms, perhaps through light- to medium-toned yellow trim and cabinets paired with light blue walls, for example, tied together further using deeper-toned yellow and blue accents for dishes, linens and seat cushions. Similarly, if you love green, choose yellow-greens such as lime, avocado or olive rather than blue-greens to keep things warm, and pair it with amber-colored woods or similarly toned French grays.

Staying Neutral

One way to maintain a sense of continuity between adjoining rooms is to use neutral gray or beige as the base color in both, while changing only the furnishing and accent colors. Gray especially transitions well between adjoining spaces because you can lighten or darken it a shade or two to subtly change each room without appearing to have changed the color at all, and neutral on neutral combos never really go out of style. Unexpected small touches in bright citrus colors or turquoise on pillows, vases and other decorative items will really pop against larger furnishings in black and white in contemporary settings; and for a warmer, more traditional look, hand-rubbed woods on larger furnishings and permanent fixtures such as tables and cabinets is classically elegant. Add variety through textured natural fibers such as burlap, bamboo or hemp.

In Two- or Three-Part Harmony