Kitchen designs: The perfect colour scheme for the heart of your home

Calm, comforting palettes are in vogue and the colours topping the wish list for home renovators reflect the natural world, shades drawn from land and sea.

Given the year we’ve had its perhaps not surprising that calm, comforting palettes are in

vogue and the colours topping the wish list for home renovators reflect the natural world, shades drawn from land and sea.

Dulux colour guru Andrea Lucena-Orr says the company’s new ‘Retreat’ palette is a reaction to the instability in the world and offers a sense of familiarity and refuge. Alongside warm whites and brown-based neutrals are dusty blues with soothing names of Blue Balm, Five

Fingers Peninsula and Winter Sea.

Introducing grey (Dulux Diffused Grey) and warm white (Dulux Whisper White) helps to

provide balance and keep things contemporary.

“We need our homes to provide balance, calm and a sense of comfort and security,” says

Lucena-Orr.

Interior design firm Studio Quarters went straight to blue when proposing the kitchen scheme for a young couple’s new kitchen. It is the pivotal room in the makeover of a 1950s red brick home in Carlingford on Sydney’s north shore and provides the colour lead for style accents throughout the home.

“We felt that the space could do with some colour and they were open to it,” says designer Theresa Chan.

Moodboard images provided more cues. “We had a gut feeling as to what would suit them

based on their inspirational images,” says Chan.

“We just felt they were a blue kind of family. It then became a matter of convincing them to go from colour to more colour.”

Chan says the kitchen’s success is due to the scale and strength of the colour. “It needed to be strong, staying with the colour and not just resorting to a feature wall.”

Splashback tiles in grey and limewashed timber floors help to tone and balance the space while the depth of the dusty blue gives it longevity.

“It’s blue but it’s a soft blue so you won’t tire of it as you might if it was really bright. The clients love it.”

Originally published as Kitchen designs: The perfect colour scheme for the heart of your home