Cottage kitchen colours: one pale, one deep, and the wood between

Stand in the kitchen doorway in the morning, before the lights go on. You see the colour of the walls first, then the cupboards, then everything brown: the floor, the worktop, the table. That is the whole palette of most kitchens that look right, and it has three parts, not ten. This page is about choosing them for the kitchen you have, which is probably small, probably not as bright as you would like, and already full of colours you never picked.

What colours suit a cottage kitchen?

Two colours and the wood. A warm pale, such as cream, buttermilk or a soft stone white, goes on the walls and ceiling. One deep colour, usually a brownish green, a grey-blue or a soft brown-black, goes on the cupboards. The wood of the worktop, the table and the floor is the third colour.

Most lists of cottage kitchen colours give you a dozen pretty swatches: sage, butter yellow, blush, duck egg, cream, forest green. Any one of them can be right. Five of them in one small room is what makes a kitchen look busy rather than kept. A pale and a deep colour give the eye somewhere to rest and somewhere to land, and the wood stops the pair looking like a paint card.

The picture at the top is that pair at work: dark green on every cupboard, a warm off-white on the walls, wood on top and underfoot, and brass on the handles. Nothing else in the room is painted a colour at all.

The colours you didn't choose

Before any paint, look at what is already there and staying: the floor, the worktop, the sink, the fridge and stove, and the light from the window. Those are colours too, and the paint has to sit with them. Hold every sample against the worktop and near the floor, as well as on the wall.

A yellowed pine floor makes most greens look greener and most whites look cleaner by comparison. A grey stone or laminate worktop cools whatever sits above it. A white fridge is a large white rectangle, and a cream wall beside it will look dirty unless the cream is clearly cream; a stone white or a deeper wall settles that quarrel better than trying to match. A black range or a stainless one reads as dark, so it can count toward the deep side of the pair.

The light is the one you can do least about. Our dark cottage kitchen page goes through north and south windows and how to leave a sample on the wall for a week, and that test holds for pale colours as much as deep ones. Do it with two pieces of card: one by the window and one on the wall facing it.

The pale one: walls and ceiling

The pale colour goes on the walls and the ceiling, and it should be warm. Choose a cream, a buttermilk or a stone white with a little yellow or red in it, never a cool bright white or a grey. Warm pales stay soft in grey winter light and look like old plaster beside wood and brass.

The paler colour is the one you see from every room that looks into the kitchen, so it does more work than the deep one, even though it gets less thought. In a kitchen with one small window, especially one facing north, it is worth going a shade warmer than looks right on the card in the shop: cool light takes some of the yellow out of it on the wall.

The ceiling can take the same colour as the walls, or the same colour a step lighter. A bright white ceiling over a cream wall shows up the cream as yellow, and the two look like they came from different houses. If the ceiling is boarded, as many cottage ceilings are, it can go one colour with the walls and the boards will give it all the line it needs.

The deep one: the cupboards

The deep colour goes on the cupboards. A green with brown in it, a grey-blue, or a soft brown-black all suit a cottage kitchen, and the right one is chosen by the wood in the room. Warm, orange pine wants a cooler green or a blue; grey or pale oak takes a warmer olive or a brown.

Lower cupboards first, if you are doing it in stages: they take a deep colour most easily and leave the top half of the room light. Upper cupboards can follow in the same colour, or stay pale with the walls. The dark cottage kitchen page has more on how deep to go and which greens hold their warmth after dark.

Brass and old iron belong to the deep colour. Dark green or blue cupboards with antique brass cabinet knobs look finished in a way that bright chrome on the same paint never quite does. If the cupboards already carry old hardware, take it off before painting, clean it, and put it back.

The wood is the third colour

The worktop, the table, the floor and any open shelf are a colour of their own, and they sit between the pale and the deep. Count them when you choose. Orange pine is a warm, strong colour; scrubbed or weathered oak is a soft grey-brown; a dark old table is nearly as deep as the cupboards.

This is why the same green can look right in one kitchen and dull in the next. Against a honey-coloured worktop a blue-green looks fresh, and the wood glows. Against a grey oak floor the same blue-green can go cold, and an olive with more brown in it brings the room back.

If the wood is new and very pale, it will darken a little as it ages and gets oiled, and the colours you choose now will still be living with it in five years. Choose for the colour it is heading toward, rather than the colour it is on the day it goes in.

Where the line falls

Decide where the deep colour stops and the pale one starts. In most cottage kitchens the line is the worktop: deep below, pale above. It can also fall at a rail partway up the wall, or between the cupboards and the wall around them. A line at the worktop is the easiest to live with.

In the picture at the top, the line runs between the cupboards and the wall: every cupboard, the tall larder and the plate rack are green, and the plaster around them is off-white. That works best when the cupboards are proper pieces of furniture with some height to them. In a kitchen with only base units, the same idea becomes deep below the worktop and pale above, which is the line most people end up with anyway.

A painted rail or beadboard to about a third of the wall gives a kitchen a second line, so the deep colour can run round the room below it. It is a good answer to a kitchen with few cupboards and a lot of bare wall.

There is one more way, which is no line at all. The corner above is one green on the boards, the window frame and the cupboards, with only the wood and the brass to break it up. In a small kitchen that can work better than a line, because the corners go quiet and the room stops looking small. It takes nerve, so try it on one wall of cupboards before the whole room.

Four cottage kitchen color schemes that work

These four pairs suit most cottage kitchens. Each has a pale for the walls and ceiling, a deep colour for the cupboards, and a note on the wood. They are starting points, not paint names, so take each one to a paint counter and choose the shade by eye, in your own light.

• Warm cream and moss green. The pair in the picture at the top, and the most forgiving: it suits pine, oak and dark old wood alike, and it looks right with brass.
• Buttermilk and grey-blue. Softer and a little cooler. Good with warm pine, which the blue calms down, and with a blue and white jug or two on the shelf.
• Stone white and soft brown-black. For a kitchen with good light and pale wood. It looks old rather than modern when the black has some brown in it and the white has some warmth.
• Cream and olive. Warmer than moss, and the one to choose for a north-facing kitchen or a grey oak floor that needs warming up.

Yellow, blush and bright blue

The cheerful colours, such as butter yellow, blush pink and a clear blue, can work in a cottage kitchen, but as the pale colour of the pair, not as a third colour beside it. A pale yellow wall with green cupboards is a cottage kitchen; a yellow wall, green cupboards and a pink door is three people's kitchens.

Butter yellow is the easiest of the three, because it is close to cream already and it warms a dark room. Blush is lovely in good light and can turn flat and pink in poor light, so it needs the sample on the wall more than any other colour here. Clear, bright blue tends to look new in an old room; a blue with grey in it lasts better.

The colours that move

Keep the bright, small colours to things that come and go: a bowl, a jug, a tea towel, a colander on a hook, whatever is in the fruit bowl. They change with the season and the washing, and the walls and cupboards stay quiet behind them.

A yellow ware mixing bowl, whose warm colour comes from the clay itself, sits beautifully against green cupboards. A vintage enamel colander in red, blue or green, hung where you can see it, is a spot of colour that also drains the potatoes. Old enamelware and stoneware do this job across a whole shelf.

In December the colour that moves is green boughs, dried orange slices and red cloth; in summer it is whatever is in the jug on the table. A kitchen whose walls and cupboards are quiet can take all of it without looking crowded.

Which paint finish, walls and cupboards

Satin is the usual choice for kitchen cupboards: it wipes clean and is forgiving of brush marks. Semi-gloss is tougher still but shows every flaw on old doors. For kitchen walls, eggshell or satin, because a kitchen wall gets splashed and wiped. Keep the flattest paint for the ceiling.

Sheen names are not the same from one paint maker to the next, and one maker's satin can look like another's eggshell. Look at a painted sample of the actual finish before buying a full can, and look at it from the side, against the window, which is how you will see the cupboard doors most of the time.

This weekend: the pale one first

Start with the walls and ceiling. Paint two large pieces of card in your warm pale, put one by the window and one on the opposite wall, and live with them for a few days. Once the pale is right, the deep colour for the cupboards is easier to choose, because you choose it against the wall it will live with.

If the cupboards are what you really want to change, paint one door first and hang it back in place for a week. One door shows you more than a whole fan of cards, and if it is wrong, it is one door. Then look at the English cottage kitchen for how the rest of the room comes together around the colour.