Kitchen Cabinet Colors

Painting – Color Choice

PAINT
There are a lot of options for paint brands for cabinets. I chose Wise Owl because it cures quickly. It’s right in the paint’s name, “One Hour Enamel”. It doesn’t actually cure in one hour, but it is incredibly fast. It hardens in 24 to 48 hours, which is faster than any other brand.

I wanted a quick hardening paint because I’m clumsy and my husband thinks that you don’t need to wipe off drips, because water is clear. (Not true, by the way.) The faster the paint is hard, the better.

(Want to know more about my experiences with different paint brands? I am writing a blog post about paint types for cabinets to be posted in the reference section)

For a week, I left the door propped up in the kitchen. I watched the colors shift as the light changed different times of day. I examined and evaluated.

The Colors I Tested Varied:

Though I like to follow my own path, I have been known to bow down to current trends on occasion. Gray is the go-to color for kitchens these days, so I included a sample of Renovation Gray.

Sea Salt is a beautiful color. Though it doesn’t show on my monitor, the actual paint is a lovely nuanced pale bluish/green, a lovely subtle color. It looked spectacular when I first put it on my cabinet. After a while, the appeal waned. Every day the Sea Salt looked paler and paler to me, more washed. The color hadn’t changed, the subtlety lost it’s appeal.

Metrocity was another gray, a greenish gray. What I didn’t know before living with this for a week is that I don’t actually like green. You learn something new every day.

Kokomo! My first choice. I love this color. It is so close to the teal I have all over my house. During this audition phase, I thought it was too bright. Now, after living with a slightly less gaudy Wanderlust, I am sorry I didn’t go with Kokomo. I love my final choice but I think I would have loved Kokomo more.

Wanderlust was the final choice. Now, months later, I still feel joy every time I enter the kitchen. The blue is clear and vivid. My kind of color.

I chose Wanderlust thinking I was thinking outside the box, the room, the building. I had not seen any kitchens in the deep, vivid blue, not in magazines, on the internet, nor on TV. I saw grayed and timid baby blues, no clear huesTurns out that I’m a trendsetter. Now, a year later, my blue kitchen cabinets are no longer unique. Almost every one of the TV reno masters has done at least one bright blue kitchen.

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