Most of the kitchen cabinets we refinish are not two tone.  Probably two kitchens in every ten we do has two colours.  As enjoyable as refinishing an entire kitchen and makint it bright white it sure is a nice break from the normal when we do a darker stained cabinet on the lower doors and drawers while keeping the upper cabinets a lighter colour. We encouaged our customer to have us use white lacquer gloss for the two cabinets above the fridge and just keep the lowers dark and typically this is the way it’s done.  All dark cabinets along the floor and white up top.  This particular customer decided agains our interior design suggestion and for some quirky reason didn’t go white above the fridge to match the other white ones.  I consider this a misstep but whatever.  I’m just a triggerman.  What do YOU think?  Did she get it right?

As luck would have it we got to do some more two tone kitchen cabinet lacquering in Port Moody.  The beautiful neighborhood of  Glenayre to be exact.  Normally the kitchen divides into the “upper cupboard doors” and the “lower cupboad doors” to make the colour selection easy peasy.  That is, unless you encouter a couple very big pantry doors and you can’t decide whether the colour should be white like the uppers or gray like the island the the lower doors and drawers.  There was some discussion as to whether the large doors should go white along with the little cabinet above the pantry doors.  I think  the big ones should have indeed gone white but I got overruled (again) by the customer who thought otherwise.  What do you think; did she make the right call?

Rick: “Ideally, the off white you pick matches the earth tones you have in your countertop” I said to my customer of this beautiful kitchen, for about the 500th time since learning how to refinish kitchen cupboards.

Customer: “CC-40 Cloud White or White Dove from Benjamin Moore will work won’t it?” My customer inquired.

Rick:  “Absolutely” I said.   “CC-40 is super for earth tones like brown and beige’s and all this golden colour in this fantastic marble” I went on.

Customer: “Glad you like it. We got it just a few months ago” my customer said.

Rick: “Well, if we paint the cupboards Cloud White then the cabinets will ehance the already aesthetically pleasing features of the marble” I said with a smile. 

Customer: “Lol, you just said that huh?”.

Rick: “Giddy up”

Customer:  “Wait a second, hold on, I want to give this some more thought”

Rick:  “Be brave.  Stick with what we know.”

Customer:  “What  exactly do we know?”

Rick:  “We know that Cloud White, with one single drop of yellow in it will get along just perfectly with these countertops”

This was a pretty easy decision when it came right down to it.  All the deep brown / honey coloured chairs where staying.  The terra cotta tiled floor was going nowhere and the countertops were definitely staying so going with Benjamine Moore’s Dove White (a cousin to Cloud White) was the way to go for this modern kitchen. 

When you factor in all the greenery in the backround then truth be told the customer here had very little choice.  They didn’t want a stark white and didn’t want a beige but wanted the proverbial “off white”.   

Easiest decision all year in regards to colour selection for these beautiful kitchen cabinets.

Oh ya, the colour of the light fixtures was factored into the colour making process as well.