She painted the orange cabinets Serenity green, and a friend thought it was a new kitchen
On paper, the kitchen was fine. The house was only eight years old when Lyndsey Wardman moved in, the kitchen was relatively new, and the layout worked. Still, she wasn’t happy with it. “While I appreciated the layout, the look left much to be desired,” she says.
The culprit was the color. The wood cabinets had a strong orange tone, and next to black countertops, a dark brown floor and a gray roller shade, they set the mood for the whole room. The kitchen’s color, she says, “was dreadful,” and “the predominant orange color gave it a cheap appearance.”
A new kitchen was never the answer. “Our budget didn’t extend to a new kitchen, nor did I feel one was necessary; it simply needed a burst of color,” she says.
Why the orange made a new kitchen look cheap
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Orange-toned wood is a strong color, even when nobody thinks of it as one. When it covers every door, drawer and panel, it stops being a material and becomes the room’s main color. Next to black counters, the contrast makes the orange look even louder.
Lyndsey’s fix was to swap that dominant color for a soft one. She chose Rust-Oleum interior wood paint in Serenity, a sage green, and kept the cabinet boxes, doors and layout exactly as they were.
Two coats, with the doors still on
She skipped one of the most time-consuming steps of cabinet painting: taking the doors off. Here is how she worked:
- Clean every surface thoroughly. Kitchen cabinets hold grease, and paint won’t stick to it. She used sugar soap, a heavy-duty cleaner; in a typical hardware store, look for a grease-cutting cleaning agent such as TSP.
- Sand lightly, just enough to scuff the old finish.
- Tape off around the doors and hinges. She painted the hinges in place. “Special care was needed around the hinges, as I chose to paint them while they remained attached to the units,” she says.
- Roll and brush on the first coat with good rollers and brushes, and let it dry.
- Add a second coat. “After the first coat, the transformation was evident, and by the second coat, it looked perfect,” she says.
The paint project came to about $96. “The paint was a delightful surprise, applying smoothly and effortlessly,” she says.
Paint wasn’t the only change. She replaced the dark brown floor with a lighter wood-look vinyl and swapped the gray roller shade for a striped Roman shade. The black countertops and sink stayed. She plans to replace them someday.
A darker green can work on orange wood too. In a kitchen where orange raised-panel cabinets wrapped three walls and an island, painting every box, door and crown molding the same deep green made the uppers read as one continuous built-in, while the countertops and backsplash stayed exactly as they were.
Why a beginner should start with a lighter green
Lyndsey calls herself a novice, and her advice comes from that. “Darker shades reveal imperfections more easily, so if you’re a novice like me, start with a lighter hue,” she says. Brush marks, drips and thin spots are much easier to spot on a deep color.
Painting with the doors on saves hours, but it has a cost. Hinges painted in place can stiffen or chip where they move, and the inside edges of the doors are hard to reach. If you want a cleaner finish, take the doors off. Keep the room ventilated while you work and while the paint dries, since you are cooking in that space.
The result held up to a close look. “Despite my inexperience, a friend thought we had a new kitchen fitted, so I assume my painting wasn’t too shabby,” she says. “The kitchen feels like a brand-new kitchen; it’s lighter and brighter as well as more modern.” That’s the trick.