Choosing flooring that compliments your kitchen cabinets is key to achieving an appealing design, and the nearly endless color combinations make the decision time consuming.  Below are some tips on choosing flooring colors that will compliment your cabinet paint or stain color choice, with kitchen photo examples for inspiration:

1.  Contrast or Compliment – don’t match.  Generally, flooring in a contrasting but complimentary color to cabinets is more appealing than a large visual area where cabinets and floors are made up of the same color.  If cabinets and flooring blend together, the effect can be visually flat, without depth or interest. Notice the kitchen photos above have woodgrain cabinets and woodgrain floors, but the floor color is in contrast to the cabinets which are darker or lighter tones. Darker flooring grounds the space and is visually appealing when paired with lighter cabinets, and the darker parts of the woodgrain flooring pick up the color from the darkest parts of the cabinetry. In a small room or a room without much natural light, lighter flooring can open up the space and make it feel larger, as in the photo below.

2. Choose a cool or warm color family and stick with it throughout the room.  Same color family undertones tie the room together. The gray kitchen cabinets below have wood flooring with grey/brown hues that complement the neutral grey cabinet color. The warm woodgrain kitchen cabinets shown below compliment the by the warm red-brown wood tones in the woodgrain tile floor.

3. When matching flooring to the cabinets makes sense. There are exceptions to every rule and while typically you wouldn’t want to exactly match flooring to cabinets because it can make the room feel flat, in some instances matching the color values makes sense. The kitchen below has different cabinet and flooring material but the color matches. The white upper cabinets, backsplash and countertops break up the sea of color and create needed contrast so the room doesn’t feel boring. The lighter uppers also open up the room and make it feel larger. While the flooring and base cabinet color is the same, there is contrast in grain pattern, with straight, rift white oak grain pattern cabinets and cathedrals and knots, along with straight grain in the flooring.

4. Take it easy on the pattern combinations.  While these days we are seeing people pair different patterns like plaids and florals or stripes and florals in clothing, a shirt and shorts or skirt are inexpensive and quick to change. Kitchen materials, on the other hand cannot be easily changed out. So before you commit to the checkerboard flooring or herringbone pattern wood floor, mosaic tile back splash and knotty hickory cabinet combination, try to pick just one detailed element so the eye isn’t overwhelmed.  If you want more texture on the cabinets and in the floors without looking too busy, a great combination is wood cabinets in a stain that evens out some of the heavy grain pattern, paired with wood flooring that has a lot of color variation such as natural red or white oak or hickory.  The stained wood has texture and subtle color differences due to the wood grain and characteristic, but it is monochromatic enough to pair with a busy floor.

5. Look at product samples next to each other. Look at a sample of your flooring, cabinet material/color, counter top and wall color next to each other in similar lighting to what you will have in your kitchen, and make sure you like how the colors and textures work together. Lay the flooring flat with the cabinet material at a 90 degree angle to the flooring as it will be in the finished room, and stand back to look at it. You may want to pick a few cabinet and flooring color options to look at next to each other in case your first choices don’t compliment each other.

6. Find online or magazine photos of kitchens or bathrooms using a similar color, material or pattern combination to give you an idea of the overall final look without making your home and your budget the Guinea pig. Burrows Cabinets website and Houzz pages have dozens of recent kitchen, bath, study and other room cabinet photos and are a great place to start.

Texas home builders, contact Burrows Cabinets today to find out about our turn-key, builder-direct cabinets in the materials and colors homeowners want for their new homes.

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