As a former Senior Writer at Apartment Therapy, Nancy split her time among looking at beautiful pictures, writing about design, and photographing stylish apartments in and around NYC.
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I spend a lot of time looking at pictures of kitchens, and I see some really, really expensive designs. Not everyone can afford marble countertops, inset cabinetry, or a $20,000 cooking range. But there is one trick that pretty much everyone can afford, and it will make your kitchen look like a million bucks: paint your cabinets and walls the same color.
In fact, paint everything in your kitchen the same color: the cabinets, the walls, shelves, the island —and even the ceiling if you want to really commit. We’ve documented before how painting furniture the same color as the wall can make a space look bigger and also give cabinetry and shelves a built-in look. As it turns out, this is particularly true in the kitchen.
In this kitchen from Plain English, walls, cabinets, and range hood alike are painted a deep hunter green for a moody, immersive look. Note that the olive green of the island is just one shade different to add a little bit of contrast.
If you love the look of open shelving but want something that blends in a little bit more, try painting your shelving the same color as the kitchen wall.
This kitchen from deVOL has cabinets and walls in the same shade of hunter green, while a marble countertop, backsplash, and a rustic wood ceiling add plenty of texture.
Of course, an all-black room, like this one from Scandinavian Love Song, is not a look for everyone, but it definitely is stunning.
But Nancy, you may be saying — all these kitchens don’t just look like really, really high-end kitchens. They are really, really high-end kitchens. But this look can also work in humbler spaces as well. For evidence, I offer up this kitchen makeover by Meghan Pflug for One Kings Lane (also lead image above) where a fairly dismal rental kitchen was painted so that the cabinets matched the color of the wall. The result? Perfection — and on a very reasonable budget.
