webuser_396222915

Help! How to modernise kitchen with baltic brown granite?

3 years ago

We are buying a property with what I believe is baltic brown granite and I think it looks quite dated. We are first time buyers so trying to keep the costs down by modernising the kitchen with some DIY. I'm thinking painting the top and bottom cabinets and putting down some nice flooring (either dark wood or nicer tiles) but at a bit of a loss to the colour scheme we should go for.


My dream kitchen would be something similar to this:


But with a darker blue similar to this:



This is what the kitchen looks like today (the granite looks a bit darker in this photo than what it actually is):



So my question is, would painting the bottom cabinets dark blue, the top cabinets white and the floor either dark wood or tiles similar to the ones below be a good idea or do you think it would be a horrible colour clash?


Potential floor tiles:



Down the line I would also like to change all of the appliances to gold or white (extractor hood, sink, tap etc but we won't be able to do that straight away.


All and any advice would be appreciated! :)



Comments (29)

  • 3 years ago

    Out of all the worktops colours I do think that brown is a specific colour and probably one of those that is hardest to work with.

    Your new kitchen is quite narrow, so perhaps a paler colour as opposed to blue?

  • 3 years ago

    The kitchen is definitely quite narrow so pale colour is definitely a good idea. But I’ve seen a couple of photos online with a similar countertop and full white kitchen and it looks quite harsh. Perhaps a cream on the top cupboards and a contrasting light blue/green on the bottom cupboards would work? Quite like the idea of having contrasting top and bottom cupboards as that’s supposed to trick your eye to make the room look bigger as well. This worktop is a nightmare to work with for sure! 😅

  • Related Discussions

    I need help with a kitchen dilemma

    Q

    Comments (2)
    Hi Sally, We've done many kitchens where the island is intentionally different from the rest of the kitchen, whether that means the countertop coloring or material, or the cabinet coloring. It tends to make the island stand out a bit and add some visual interest to the space. You can change materials completely and go with a wood counter or man made material (such as Silestone or Corian) or stick with natural stone and just change the coloring. I'd suggest going with something more solid in coloring, either lighter (playing off of the grey/brown coloring you have) or darker such as a speckled black. I hope this is helpful. Good luck.
    ...See More

    Help us stop our new kitchen from going clinical!

    Q

    Comments (43)
    I thought I'd update everyone as to what we settled on as most of you won't have seen the finished post. Went went for Little Greene French Pale Grey on the walls and then a Grey Quartz worktop which had worked quite well. To stop it from being clinical, we opted for some textured wallpaper in the dining area which is Bala Storm (I think) from John Lewis. We then added some natural tones using a wooden table, and then Vitra chairs. Along with wooden fruit bowl etc. The main window will have wooden venetian blinds, and the bay windows will probably be done in a darker grey material as the perfect fit style blinds you find in conservatories
    ...See More

    Kitchen help!!!

    Q

    Comments (81)
    .... Which I absolutely love! I'm going to purchase some copper knives and some marble canisters to replace the ones next to the kettle but I am so so happy with how it looks so far :) we both want an induction hob which may come this year and I would absolutely love some white marble work tops to finish the kitchen but hey, work in progress
    ...See More

    Need help for my kitchen

    Q

    Comments (22)
    There are kitchen companies that can replace the doors, plinths and end panels etc thus completely changing the colour of your kitchen but using existing units. One I know if is Dream doors which my neighbour used to go from dark wood to cream and I cannot tell they are the old units. I like your kitchen, the layout seems good. I feel whats making it feel a bit dated is the amount of orangey pine or similar wood. Even changing the door knobs would help. If you wanted a greater change, a handleless slab kitchen in either a matching cream as the aga, or a grey might work? As an aside, changing the colour of the floor might help too.
    ...See More
  • PRO
    3 years ago

    Baltic brown granite is beautiful and I have used it several times in kitchens. But I recommend you no go crazy with colours. I would say, Brown with pattern (granite) + Dark blue + White Pattern (tiles) might be a bit chaotic. Try to go for creams-browns

    My recommendation is to go for a very light cream matt colour for cabinets, which looks beautiful with bronze knobs ( I can see in the pictures that is different knobs in bottom and up cabinets)

    For the floor tiles, I recommend you to go for big pale cream ones, it will make you kitchen look more spacious.

    And my last recommendation is to remove the end panel covered with granite (right side of picture), i think is better to add a regular cabinet panel in there

  • 3 years ago

    I think you are right that it will be too much with the patterned tiles + dark blue + the granite. Do you think a light blue might work better like the attached photos? Or is all white/cream both top and bottom the best option?

  • 3 years ago

    Or perhaps that light green that/sage that Sonia posted on the bottom cabinets and cream on the top?

  • 3 years ago

    *light green/sage (autocorrect)

  • 3 years ago

    A light green would work fine with a brown worktop. That is light though, not dark which is currently very popular. I wold keep top and bottom the same colour.

  • 3 years ago

    I would move in and live in it and take your time to work out what you want to do. In terms of the colours of the granite it is lovely and has the potential for some interesting colour palettes. Warm greys would work really well with flashes of dirty pink. You could remove the upper cupboards on the left side and retile with dirty pinky beige Zellige tiles and paint the cupboards a warm grey. Then the worktop would look like a coherent part of the scheme. Browns are much more in at the moment than cool greys, not that trends matter, but the cool grey trend has passed.


  • 3 years ago

    We have a bit of an overlap while moving where we still have the option to stay at our old flat so really wanted to use that time to do any painting (the rest of the house is in excellent condition and doesn’t need anything done to it and the only thing I don’t like is the kitchen wooden colour and kitchen floor). We also have a puppy arriving a month after completion and will be so busy with that which is another reason we want to do the kitchen ASAP 😅

  • 3 years ago

    Painting kitchen unit doors is hard and time consuming. Be prepared to spend ages doing it. It won’t be a couple of days.

  • PRO
    3 years ago

    I can tell that you really want to go for that blue colour. So thinking bit further on it, maybe the solution is to paint the top cabinets as matched as possible with the wall tiles (this will create a bit of "invisibility") and paint also the back wall in the same colour.

    Again, try to go for plain big floor tiles matching the wall colours, so only the bottom cabinets and worktop are left to highlight, and, I believe, in this case you can try to paint it blue. MAke some tests first (paint a paper on top of the cabinet) with different blue tones, and see it through the day. It might be also good idea to think about lighting

    I personally like the blue in both first pictures on your posts, they are not very dark but warm enough.

    Hope this helps!


  • 3 years ago

    That definitely helps! Great idea to paint different test colours on paper to see what will work best as well so will definitely follow that advice. Can’t wait to get started now! 😁

  • 3 years ago

    I had a similar issue and spent a lot of cash compromising with new tiles, paint and appliances. I wish I hadn’t bothered, and waited until I re-did the kitchen (albeit 10 years later) when I had saved enough for my dream kitchen. The money was really a waste, so my advice is paint only! Have you thought of lighter base units and darker wall units so there is a contrast with the granite?

  • 3 years ago

    Hm no hadn't thought about swapping it around actually. Wish I had some type of easy to use design tool where I could edit the colours to see how it would look! Thinking I'll do some tests on paper and play around with it to see what it would look to have white on the bottom and colour on the top. The reason why I was thinking white on the top is because they would blend with the backspash and in my head make the room feel bigger?


    This home is not our forever home and we'll probably be there for about 5 year (only 2 bedrooms so when we start having kids we'll definitely have to up-size!). This might be a massive no no in the design community but I've seen a lot of DIY videos of people using temporary peel and stick flooring so that could be a cheaper temporary option to get it to look like what I want and then we can replace it down the line.


    I might be very optimistic but feel like it won't take me too long to paint the kitchen. Unscrew, sand, base coat and two more coats of the colour we want. Recon I could do that in a week but we shall see! :D


    Also want to replace the handles on all the cupboards to gold but need to do some research on mixing metals as it won't be in the budget to replace the extractor fan and sink straight away.

  • 3 years ago

    I think I would choose a warm grey (so a grey with a brown quality) and add a black/ oil rubbed handle.
    If you really want to include blue then consider finding a blind that includes both blue and the warm grey colour

  • 3 years ago

    I really like that worktop as it could work so well with a dirty musty pink colour... or as pale grey colour as the others are suggesting.. I don't think cream or white is a good option though unles you plan to clean your kitchen at least twice a week to keep it looking nice...also painting it white or cream shows every and any chip mark that you make so going musty pink or grey could reduce that look

  • 3 years ago

    How about...putting the new patterned tiles (Lino?) down, leaving the base cupboards as they are, painting top cupboards a soft white, re-tiling with a soft white, country metro tile with a grey grout and changing you window dressing to a shutter/blind also soft white. I would take away the red small appliances (as they highlight the red tones of the brown) and introduce white ones. And add some plants on the window sill or in a few hanging stone planters.

  • PRO
    3 years ago


    hello we are door and kitchen decoration in china 008613282012713 its our whtaspp account be free to contact us

  • PRO
    3 years ago


    all is availble 008613282012713

  • PRO
    3 years ago



  • PRO
    3 years ago


    008613282012713 can contact us any time we are located in china we have a new design for 2021 welcome to contact us any time

  • 3 years ago

    Mille TT- it is true you don’t hear much about peel and stick flooring on Houzz 🤣. But I can speak from experience it’s worth considering. I made a snap decision to use it temporarily when I discovered how “un-cleanable”, worn and tired the existing white vinyl kitchen floor was when we moved in. A few hours and about £100 later I was sticking down a “limestone” tile floor that made a massive difference..... and stayed in remarkably good shape until we renovated a good 7 years later than initially planned! In a funny way, that vinyl tile helped stretch that timeline out, because it made my kitchen much more pleasant.

  • 3 years ago

    Instead of working round the problem worktop, and making all kinds of compromises to accommodate it, I’d suggest you investigate replacing it. So many options at every budget & a lighter colour would transform the space.

  • 3 years ago

    You wanted a design tool—try Room Arranger (ios, android, windows). It’s free unless you want to keep your design (a workaround if you don’t want to pay is to screenshot the elements of the design you want to keep). If you take photos of the existing granite, you’ll be able to arrange your cupboards as they are and colour them as you please.

    Personally, I think the top cupboards should either be removed/reduced if you can find more storage elsewhere. If kept, paint them pale so that they fade into the background. I would forget painting the lowers until your puppy is at least a year old, depending on the breed—if you’re doing the work yourself it takes several weeks to do (speaking from painful experience) and the paint will then need another lot of weeks to reach full hardness. It would drive you nuts if you put all that time into it, only for the puppy to scratch or mark your hard work, which is quite likely (I’ve had three puppies, by the way). If you really can’t live with the doors, and they’re standard sized, maybe just change them for something inexpensive from ikea/B&Q etc that you can live with for a few years? Then if they’re badly damaged they’re easily replaced out as needed (assuming you’re not unlucky and pup doesn’t go mad with multiple doors). Alternatively, you might be able to get them spray painted, which I believe gives a very tough coating.

  • 3 years ago

    I think KingBings suggestion of dusky pink could work really well... pink on the bottom and white or off white and the top and reckon you could make it Pinterest worthy :p

    I think a dark colour just won’t look good with the dark worktop - it’ll be a bit too much, and brown is hard.

  • 3 years ago

    I’m definitely starting to lean more and more towards either dusky pink or sage on the bottom cabinets and cream/off white on the top. Would that work best with a light floor? Or could it work with dark wood? And any patterns that would trick the eye to make it look a bit wider?

  • 3 years ago

    lighter floor could help open up the room? the common saying of dark spaces look small and crowded is quite true when it comes to decoration... were you going to use tiles or planks of wood for flooring? that also makes a difference as planks help to elongate the room whereas tiles help to make the room look wider

  • 3 years ago

    If you’re planning to do a bigger remodel later on, I would keep this update rather inexpensive and save your £££.


    I think Sonia’s suggestion for taupe or a pale sage green would work really well. You could also go for a more pinky taupe as others have suggested.


    I’d do the top units in an off white and paint the wall the same colour so they’re less obtrusive.


    Rather than replacing the tiles, why not regrout to freshen them up? Maybe even try out a different grout colour. Tile stickers are also an option!


    Left to me, I would go for LVT or a good quality vinyl roll in a pale tile or whitewash wood effect.



United Kingdom
Tailor my experience with cookies

Houzz uses cookies and similar technologies to personalise my experience, serve me relevant content, and improve Houzz products and services. By clicking ‘Accept’ I agree to this, as further described in the Houzz Cookie Policy. I can reject non-essential cookies by clicking ‘Manage Preferences’.