Designing With Color and Texture: Building a Backdrop
Remember that your kitchen is the background for many intensely colored or textural things including vegetables, flowers, dishes, pans and other smaller objects. Exercising restraint with the overall design will allow these intense natural and manmade objects to stand out against the backdrop. Some colors clash with food resulting in unappetizing or harsh combinations that prove wearying over time. With a restrained palette featuring only one or two intense elements you can always use art or flowers to bring up colors.
Certain colors and textures represent very practical problems. We’ve had problems with black ceramic glazed sinks because every water mark and scratch shows up over time. Many porous stone and unglazed tile surfaces absorb oils resulting in unsightly stains that are permanent. Sharp corners and hard surfaces can be safety issues especially where small children are present. Using painted walls in lieu of a backsplash for a minimalist look will mean frequent repainting as it is next to impossible to clean food splatters off the water based paints in use today.
