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A Seasoned Approach to Solving Home Color Problems
How do you match cabinet color to crown molding? How do you match white crown molding with colorful cabinets? Should I stain my crown molding to match wooden trim or cabinetry? There are so many questions and thoughts about crown molding on how to make your house look the best it possibly can. While the answers are limitless, certain design truths ring universal among most home decor experts. We wanted to tackle a few of these questions in order to give you some good ideas for crown molding color.
Color Theory and the Purpose of Crown Molding
From the days of ancient Greece, moldings have significantly contributed to the ornamentation of structures. Creating discrete visual spaces within rooms can be easily accomplished with subtle transitions afforded by trim and molding. Consider the crown moldings in your home as fundamental building blocks to the visual tone of the area.
Crown moldings serve to provide a point of gradation between walls or cabinetry and the ceiling. Some schools of thought will advise matching the crown molding color to the ceiling, the walls, your cabinets, or to paint it a separate color entirely in order to cement its role as a transition element. While there is no right approach, some contemporary accepted practices can help you resolve your color dilemma.
Should Crown Molding Color Match the Ceiling
If you are remodeling a room and considering crown molding, the question of whether it should directly match the ceiling has likely cropped up. Many designers will tell you that the answer lies in the height of your ceiling. The taller the walls of the room are, the more motivated you should be to “draw the ceiling down” rather than giving a cavernous sense to the space.
Conversely, a room can feel taller when the wall color extends through the moldings. This enhances other vertical visual elements as well, allowing them to flourish in the eye of the viewer:
Should Crown Molding Color Match My Cabinets
If you are looking to install new cabinets, the overwhelming majority of remodels will include crown molding colored and styled to suit the cabinetry. However, this can leave you wondering how to approach the crown molding in the remainder of the room.
In most remodels, your new cabinets will be the centerpiece of your kitchen or bathroom. Their color and style dictate the visual appeal of the area, and striking a point of uniformity with them can only go well. Typically you can actually pick up more of the crown molding from your cabinet supplier in order to match style perfectly, and this is most recommended. Otherwise, you should try to match the paint color as closely as possible with one notable exception: staining. It can be very difficult to closely match the existing stain, and two separate shades may prove to be a negative contrast:
The sharp difference can be startling and make the room seem poorly thought out. When you match your crown molding with your cabinets, a beautiful cohesion emerges:
In the event that your cabinets are not sufficiently close to the ceiling and you enjoy some extra wall space above them, it can be visually pleasing to revert to basic crown molding color philosophies:
Dado Railing Color Conformity
Many of these points are also applicable to dado molding (chair rails), as far as color matching is concerned. The greater sense of a unified theme in a room, and the stronger the impact of that theme will be.
Achieving Uniformity While Standing Out
As you can tell, there are numerous approaches to a color dilemma with your crown molding. With some of the tips and information above, you should feel empowered to make stylistic choices in order to increase the visual appeal of your rooms.
