Our green kitchen wall – my love story with colour

Welcome to my green kitchen. If two years ago anyone had told me that I would have a home with blue and green walls, I would have laughed at them. Still, somehow I fell in love with slightly bolder colour choices. Read on to find out how.

When I first started thinking about the decor in our apartment, my idea was to make everything white. Floors, walls, most of the furnishing. I grew up reading Finnish interior design magazines and I always loved the crisp white interiors they featured. However, my boyfriend had some very different ideas and so the white floors became whitewashed instead and the living room received a blue feature wall.

Perhaps it was that blue wall that got me started with more colour. I still absolutely love white and light colours but somehow all-white became bland in my eyes. Too safe. Too boring. Furthermore, in my experience here in the Netherlands the use of colour is a bit bolder than up in the Northern Europe. Sure, they like their neutral palettes and browns and beiges but it’s not all-white.

Our kitchen lies at the back of the house, windows facing into our backyard. Unfortunately, our neighbours’ balcony is right above the back windows so we don’t get as much direct sunlight as I would like. At least once the backyard is finished we can enjoy the morning sun on our patio.

One day I was looking at our kitchen and its white walls and I felt that it needed more contrast. I love our high-gloss white cabinet doors but I felt they didn’t get the attention they deserved against a white wall. First I thought about using the same blue we used in the living room, but then I thought that it would be a little boring. A different colour would also help to define the kitchen as its own space without closing it off.

My choice fell to green because it’s such a natural colour. Maybe it’s my Nordic roots but using colours from the nature feels very comfortable to me. Together with my boyfriend we went paint shopping and ended up painting the same night. Eventually we also added the grey backsplash because cleaning the wall was a nightmare.

The green kitchen wall now creates a nice contrast between the living room and all the white in our house. I still want to add some botanical art and more plants in for the ultimate green kitchen. For the moment, though, I am very happy with how everything turned out.