Choosing a Kitchen/Sun Room Paint Color

My paint indecision is well documented. I have several lockers full of sample paints as evidence. And choosing a kitchen paint color is no different.

To back up, we first painted the tongue-and-groove walls of our cottage between September 2015 and April 2016. At the time, the only two rooms that didn’t get a coat of paint were our guest bedroom (which would go on to become our boys’ bedroom) and our kitchen.

Painting tongue-and-groove is a pretty laborious task. Where typical interior paint jobs require cutting in at the edges, painting tongue-and-groove requires brushing along each and every crack before following it up with a roller. Getting a paint color wrong really isn’t an option if you don’t want to waste hours and hours of your life.

I first chose gray on my walls because, honestly, it was trendy at the time. I tried to lie to myself and convince myself that I really just loved gray and wanted it on my walls.

Here’s a good rule of thumb about whether you really love a paint color: Is it in your closet anywhere? Spoiler alert: Gray was absolutely not in my closet.

In reality, I wanted a neutral because I was convinced, at the time, that it was the only way to be able to experiment with furnishings. I’ve learned quite a bit since then, especially about color. And while I really do want a neutral on my walls in the kitchen, my lower cabinets are an ode to the deepest, beautiful shade of green. And I plan to carry that green right on up around the trim, the front door, the swinging kitchen door, etc. It will be beautiful.

Our kitchen cabinets were originally painted white in 2018 when I wanted to lighten up the room. It turns out, we aren’t white cabinet people. Between toddler fingers and spills that weren’t always cleaned up in a timely manner, they started to look really rough in a fairly short period of time. So in December 2021, I painted the lower cabinets green with a promise to return to the upper cabinets at some point to correct my very white, bright mistake.

And while I’m 100 per cent set on that decision, exactly what shade of beige to paint on my walls is proving to be a real head-scratcher.

I absolutely love Sherwin Williams’ Kilim Beige. It’s just so warm and creamy. I just painted it on the peg shelf of our master bedroom last week, and its softness just really allows all of the fun vintage pretties on the shelf to stand out. It also doesn’t pull quite as yellow on that project as it seems to pull in the image below.

And that’s really what I’m going for with this kitchen paint job. It’s currently the front-runner, and it has been since I first picked up the little paint chip from Lowe’s back in the spring.

While I was at the store last week, I also snagged two other Sherwin Williams paint samples: Natural Linen and Bungalow Beige.

Natural Linen is beautiful, but it pulls a little peach in most rooms that are flooded with sunlight.

I wouldn’t say that our kitchen is flooded with sunlight, but our little kitchen table area and sunroom are almost entirely windows, so I’m just a little worried about how that color will pull in those conditions.

P.S. it’s so funny how paint samples can look so different in different rooms, lighting situations, etc.

As far as Bungalow Beige goes, it actually looks like it’s the darkest sample I pulled, but in all of the sample images I’ve seen, it looks like it’s the lightest.

But, this one does appear to be the truest beige of the bunch. It just looks a touch cooler than what I’m going for in the kitchen.

Tomorrow, I’m going to try to find an inconspicuous place to test out all three colors. Do you follow our social media accounts? If not, head over to Facebook or Instagram tomorrow to check out stories and help me decide which to choose!