If your home is like most, the kitchen is one of the busiest places in the entire residence. Given that, you should make sure it’s designed to match your personality and daily life. Having a kitchen that’s easy on the eyes is a tremendous benefit to a room you spend so much time in. Choosing the particular look can be hard with all the various trends and ideas you find. You could hire an interior decorator to help you out, but you can also design a two-tone kitchen for an effective on-trend design. Knowing the following design tips can help you create a two-tone kitchen design you’ll enjoy as part of your home.
1. Create One Focal Point
You may find various options that speak to your heart as you consider different colors and decor elements. However, using too many of them can overwhelm your eyes once they’re put into play. An excessive number of focal points is a frequent error with two-tone kitchens. Try to narrow down a single focal point. Use that as one of the two colors for the rest of the room. Two-tone kitchen cabinets are a common way of doing this. In many cases, homeowners pick one set of their cabinets to be the focal point and then use painted cabinets for a contrasting accent color. If your kitchen has an island, consider making that the focal point thanks to its central location. It can stand out visually in ways that won’t overwhelm everything else around it.
2. Keep Colors Balanced
Color balance is crucial whether you opt for a bold aesthetic or a more conservative contrast. Don’t rule out bright colors when ordering your RTA cabinets! Get a color wheel to reference to consider complementary and adjacent color pairs. White is a timeless look for a kitchen and can bring harmony if you employ the 60-20-10 rule of 60% dominant color, 30% secondary color, and 10% accent color. White is commonly a sound choice for the secondary color.
3. Take Lighting Into Account
Any time you pair a darker color with a lighter one, it’s usually smart to have the lighter color featured on the upper cabinets while the darker color is on your lower cabinets. The contrast of having lighter colors higher from the floor usually makes human eyes drift upward to create a sense of space that feels bigger than it is. It’s particularly effective if your vinyl plank flooring is also a dark shade.
4. Utilize Coordinating Elements
Your two-tone kitchen might have different colors across the aesthetic, including contrasting or complementary cabinets, but you should still aim for a cohesive vibe throughout the room. Coordinating elements with consistent colors can bring the room together to ensure contrasting elements appear in synch. If your colors fall within the same palette or are just distinct shades of an identical color, then a cohesive look is easier to pull off. If your cabinets feature very different colors, combine them by using identical cabinet hardware on all your cabinets.
5. Instill Character With a Tide-Line Effect
Cabinetry is the common choice for two colors in this kitchen design, but you can also do it with the walls. A tide-line effect is simple and catchy. Add one of the two colors at eye level. Make it an unbroken line around the kitchen. It’s a surefire way to give your room character. Better yet, it’s not permanent if you don’t like it, and you can experiment with other effects. You might skip two distinct colors and try two different finishes of the same color. Creating a tide line separating gloss and eggshell can be a striking aesthetic.
6. Take a Modern Step With Color Blocking
As you sift through two-tone kitchen ideas, you may notice that most fall into two categories of color division. The first involves a horizontal split, often upper versus lower cabinets, or a focal point where the island is a distinct shade. Color blocking is an alternative to both that involves putting contrasting colors into modular areas for a free-flowing look. You can do this to mix white kitchen ideas with blue ones while still tying the room together with consistent cabinet hardware for a look that’s simultaneously dramatic and airy.
Trendy and Timeless
Decor trends come and go, but the two-tone design is much more than a trend. If you choose timeless traditions while picking your finishes and colors, your kitchen can stand the test of time with a classic appeal. You can incorporate the two-tone design into any kitchen style, from a smaller, vintage galley space to an extra spacious kitchen with an open layout. Use these tips to develop a two-tone kitchen you will love both now and for many years to come.