Kitchens in time for Easter — Book now
An illustration of the United Kingdom's flag Made in the UK
An illustration of the head and mane of a horse 100 years of design expertise
Which? Best Buy 6 years in a row
Lifetime Cabinet Guarantee

Kitchen Colour Combinations

Transform your kitchen using warmth, vibrancy or cooling tones in timeless and surprising combinations.

Contemporary kitchen design with Magnets Seagrass Dunham kitchen, its thin frame and smooth painted finish with no visible woodgrain, a kitchen island with breakfast bar and wood herringbone flooring..

Our guide decodes kitchen colour trends and processes for discerning the best colour for your kitchen, so you can begin building your own kitchen colour palette.

Kitchen colour ideas

Whether you’re working with a spacious area or smaller kitchen or pantry, there are many styles of kitchen paint colour to inspire your design.

Timeless

These kitchen colour combinations always seem clean, contemporary and inviting.

  • Warm or blonde wood cabinets and stools with white worktops and walls
  • Duck egg blue walls with oak tables, chairs and white accents from cabinets and radiators 
  • A sage green wall colour and walnut furniture offers a traditional country cottage feel
Magnet's modern Portobello kitchen in a light woodgrain décor, finished with brass bar handles.
Modern Shaker kitchen Brunswick Sumi Black handleless with integrated ovens in tall cabinetry, open layout living room with wood dining table, hallway cabinetry with coat hangers and akupanel.

Trending

The newest colour designs often take popular or timeless colour combinations in a subtle but inspired direction. 

  • Forest green walls, cabinets and textiles teamed with natural wood worktops is a natural, earthy alternative to the high-end look and luxuriousness of the rich dark green and chrome accent trend 
  • Muted olive cabinets and tiles with cream worktops and walls is another update on the countryside sage colour combination. Think more country manor than rustic kitchen.
  • Black cabinets, walls and black cast iron ranges teamed with oak worktops and furniture make a strong statement even with their subdued tones. It’s a style that appears to take its lead from other recent moody colour trends such as dark academia.

Popular palettes

It would be wrong to see popular kitchen colour combinations as simply those with “mass appeal”.  These colour palettes crop in kitchens time and again precisely because of their distinctive personality and lasting impact rather than resale appeal.

  • Earth-toned kitchens offer a warm and neutral aesthetic, specifically those that make use of beige, blonde and deep brown woods, with off-whites and creams.
  • Matte colours entered the mainstream a few years ago for their strong depth of colour and laid-back aesthetic, which is noticeably different to popular high gloss commercial designs. 
  • Navy kitchens cultivated a following last year and have maintained their fanbase due to the versatility of the trend. You’ll see them paired with white or charcoal countertops, and set against white walls of navy blues of varying hues.

Explore kitchens by colour

Explore our kitchen collections and discover unrivalled quality

Spacious kitchen colours

With ample room to play with, no colour is off the menu. But the opportunity to play with colours otherwise unavailable to smaller spaces due to their size and available light is often too great a temptation.

  • Black and moody hues with brushed metal finishes stylishly combine two sins of small spaces: dark and matte colours and finishes. In more cramped spaces these might be oppressive, but in larger kitchens they create a luxurious and intimate feel.
  • Taupe and smokey grey or charcoal is a popular variation on this theme
  • The rich red and brown combination of burgundy and walnut is opulent and warm, perfect for creating a cosier feel from large spaces.
  • The light absorbing quality of matte colour also makes any combination - bright or dark - a win for larger spaces

Colour trends for smaller spaces

Smaller spaces, and especially pantry areas, will benefit from light colours and reflective finishes to assist the travel of light around the room.

  • Differing shades of white across walls, countertops and cabinets can add interest while maintaining an open and airy feel
  • Two main colours, such as pale blue and cream or light grey and pale pink, will help to avoid visual clutter.

How to build a colour scheme

While kitchen colour combinations draw upon many sources of inspiration including trends, personal preferences and colour theory, a simple way to start your search for a kitchen colour scheme is using colour psychology.

Use colour psychology to narrow your preferences

For example, cool blues exude calmness, while yellows are associated with energy and cheerfulness. Warm, deeper colours, like reds are said to stimulate appetite. 

The trend of “colour drenching” also has a psychological benefit. The cohesiveness of matching many shades of the same colour supposedly has a calming effect on the mind, as the eye isn’t darting around the room to comprehend contrasting colours and features. 

Whatever you want from your kitchen colour palette, looking into how you personally respond to different colours and combinations could be a good place to start.

Premium Shaker kitchen Wardley Tailored green with traditional detailing, brass accessories, fluted glass wall vitrine cabinets, standalone Wardley Chalk Blush pantry, Classic Flint Grey oiled oak engineered wood flooring.
Shaker kitchen in the bright and beautiful yellow shade Harvest, paired with open wooden shelf and a marbled worktop.

Make a list of your kitchen elements which can contribute to the colour palette

Whether you’re installing a brand new kitchen or working with existing features, you’ll need to consider the interplay of colours from different sources. 

The list is longer than you might think. Depending on what you have in your kitchen, you can control or incorporate different colours from:

  • Upper cabinets
  • Lower cabinets
  • Countertops
  • Ceiling
  • Beams
  • Splashbacks and other tiled areas
  • Floors
  • Handles
  • Faucets
  • Shelves
  • Visible light fixtures, such as chrome pendant lights
  • Bar stools and other seating
  • Islands

 

Once you’ve identified all the potential colour influences in your kitchen, you can decide the role each one might play through its colour.

Tips on balancing tones 

A sneaky tip for balancing the tones in your colour palette is to use the 60:30:10 rule, where the dominant colour occupies 60% of the space, the secondary 30%, and the accent colour is used across 10% of the space. How you apply this ratio to the available elements in your kitchen is up to you.

For a less mathematical approach, you can consider the impact of colour from certain fixtures.

For example, a floating kitchen island in a dark colour could be used to create depth and an anchor point for the entire kitchen space around which to bring in other shades or complementing colours.

The complex grain in wood cabinets or natural stone worktops could provide the inspiration for a palette of colours which can be extended to different areas of the kitchen.

Cabinet handles - whether matt, chrome, or a contrasting white - can also be used to make rich-coloured cabinets pop.

If you prefer a more monochromatic look, you can also use different textures rather than colours to create a perceptible difference in the colour scheme. On the other hand, if you’re struggling to tie together two or more colour schemes, a bridging colour, perhaps across tile work, can help to create balance and bring them together.