Benefits of Yellow
If your kitchen doesn’t get much natural light or could use some visual warmth, yellow is the perfect choice: It’s the most luminous shade and not too far from white, but has the added benefit of chasing any chill. Use it to brighten up the space where you and your family gather, and fuel yourselves with a burst of sunshine. And don’t just think canary, but amber, autumn leaves, corn meal, the mellow glow of a sunset, or a lion’s mane. To get you started, here are our 17 favorite yellow kitchens, from the pages of This Old House.
Creamy Yellow
A creamy take on the shade makes a nice but neutral alternative to white on these detailed cabinets.
Get more background on this kitchen remodel.
Bold Statement
A kitchen goes bold in Fiesta-ware hues, including sunflower walls.
Read about how this kitchen came to be.
Pretty Buttercream
Soft, buttercream enrobes this space, enlivened with splashes of red.
Check out more on this galley kitchen.
Corn-Colored Beauty
Fields of corn-colored tile provide a showcase for a series of Delft accents.
Read more on how an architect maximized space in this kitchen.
Saturated Hues
Pop goes the kitchen, as lemon pairs up with its neighbors on the color wheel—lime, grass and Granny Smith green—to enliven this space.
Homeowner Nancy Traversy embraced exactly this kind of bold pairing in her own kitchen, where vibrant green perimeter cabinets and a sunny yellow island are united by a multicolor tile backsplash. Dark granite and light wood counters focus all the attention on the cheery palette—proof that saturated citrus hues can carry an entire room.
Pro Tip: Kitchen designer Kathy Walder, who worked on a TOH-featured yellow-and-green kitchen addition near Chicago, spent extensive time fine-tuning these bold combinations. “It took a lot of time to think about ways to use color and create a balanced look,” says Walder. The homeowner even made copies of the architectural elevations and used crayons to color them in a half-dozen different combinations before committing.
Read more about this kitchen’s energetic color scheme.
Cheery Yellow
Touches of red applied artfully and sparingly throughout this early 20th-century-style lemon-meringue yellow kitchen keep its palette from veering into golden arches territory.
Interior designer Candra Scott employed a similar strategy in her 1904 San Francisco home, pairing butter-yellow walls with glass-front cabinets trimmed in red—her own design—along with a cheerful checkerboard floor and vintage linoleum rug to give the cook space an acquired-over-time feeling that blends Victorian-era accents with hard-working details from the 1920s and ’30s.
Check out more details on this vintage-style kitchen.
Green Meets Gold
The greenish gold of extra-virgin olive oil is so apropos on these cabinets.
Learn more about the unique paint color used in this kitchen.
Striking Blond
Handsome blond walls in an Arts-and Crafts influenced kitchen showcase the walnut cabinetry and cedar green accents.
See more on how a team collaborated to update this kitchen.
Mellow Yellow
A touch of butter-pat yellow enlivens the walls and pairs well with the aqua green cabinet interiors and vintage bottle collection.
Check out how this beach house kitchen came to be.
Soft Yellow
The soft yellow walls and red-toned wood cabinets really warm up this space, while touches of black in the backsplash, window seat cushion and window-blind’s tape, add crispness.
TOH Project Insight: In a similar soft-yellow kitchen featured in TOH Magazine, homeowner Ellen Bailey Dickson of Glenview, Illinois, paired yellow cabinets with white furniture-style built-ins and sunny ceramic wall tiles to set a cheery tone in her 1940s Tudor cottage. As Ellen put it: “We wanted the kitchen to reflect the traditional feel of the house, but we also wanted to bring in some of the color and fun of modern design.”
Get more details on this kitchen’s fixtures.
Let the Sunshine in
Why not add a wash of sunshine in the sunniest room in the house?
Read on for the before-and-after story of this .
Golden Delight
Golden walls extend the warmth of the island’s tilework.
Check out what details can bring a kitchen to life.
Dazzling Shade
A field of glass mosaic tiles in shades from turmeric to polenta make for a dazzling—and easy to clean—backdrop.
Glass mosaic tiles like these are sold in sheets about 1 foot square, with pieces connected by a mesh backing or paper front to ease installation. But if your backsplash design involves lots of complex cuts or sits in a wet area, you may want to leave the job to a professional tile setter.
Pro Tip: To get a good idea of how a glass mosaic will look installed, do a mock-up: Get a full-size sheet and grout it. The grout lines can significantly alter the overall color impression, especially with warm shades like these.
See more about the glass mosaic tile backsplash in this kitchen.
Joyful Yellow
A golden delicious wall shines its light on a cool aluminum backsplash and sharp white trim and cabinets.
Pro Tip: Yellow can intensify on the wall, so consider limiting the sunshine-inspired shade to just an accent wall and windows to keep it from overwhelming. Grounding it with sophisticated neutrals like warm white, ebony brown, and taupe gray helps strike the right balance. For a modern-farmhouse feel, try pairing bright-yellow walls with weathered neutrals and muted-blue accents.
Learn more about the transformation of this kitchen.
Pop of Yellow
A pop of yellow paired with a countertop in violet—its complementary shade on the colorwheel—makes for a harmonious space.
See more about the color scheme used in this kitchen.
Curry-Inspired Hue
Painting an upper row of cabinetry an almost imperceptibly lighter hue of curry than the base cabinets gives this space a lift.
Find out how more on this period-style kitchen.
Mustard Yellow
A mustard yellow hutch holding plenty of green and red ceramics brings some heat to a serene grass-cloth clad wall.
Sweet Color
Cabinets in banana-pudding yellow sweeten a sleek space with vintage accents.
Check out additional details on this vintage kitchen.
