Oak cabinetry often features an orange finish that can make your kitchen appear outdated. To tone down the warmth and create a modern kitchen with oak cabinets, outfit the rest of the kitchen in cool refreshing tones such as blues or greens.
Colors with warm undertones like cream, beige, and warm greens will minimize the orange in the oak. Cool colors such as gray, blue, or purple will actually make the orange stand out. Learn how to choose kitchen paint colors that go with oak cabinets here.
Tone down the orange. If your wooden cabinets are stained a shade that pulls orange, you can do this by changing your wall paint color and cabinet door hardware. Choose a paint color that works with the cabinets to tone down the orange. Lots of recommendations include greige or beige colors.
Additionally, gray works well to soften overly-bright oranges, as it is a complementary color to orange. If you want something more subtle, go for a muted version of green or gray. Other non-primary colors such as beige, tan, and brown can also help to tone down the orange wood cabinets.
If you look at a color wheel (google it)… the color on the opposite side is the “neutralizer”. So by painting the walls with a gray that had a purple undertone, it reflects onto the cabinets neutralizing the orange on them. Try it.
One of the most effective ways to remove unwanted orange hues from the wood is to add a stain with blue undertones. This technique works because blue and orange are complementary colors on the color wheel. When the two colors are mixed, they cancel each other out, creating a neutral tone.
Try using a gel stain on those dated orange-yellow honey oak cabinets to give your kitchen a new look. There are a lot of good reasons to gel stain cabinets when you want to refresh the color of wood cabinetry. It's an easy way to give your kitchen or bathroom a new look without sanding or stripping.
Coupling orange with neutrals like white, beige or gray is a great way to offset the intensity of the color.
Bleaching kitchen cabinets can be done using a household chlorine-based bleach or a 2-part store-bought bleach. One removes dye and the other removes the wood's natural color.
After your piece has been sanded and any finish has been removed, it's time to apply the Liming Wax. This white wash helps to neutralize the orange, and lighten it up. I used a small paint brush I already owned to paint in on, then a rag to wipe off the excess. It leaves a faint, white wash on the wood.
Neutrals and white will help orange cabinets to stand out, and blue and purple touches will create a bold contrast and will make your space more colorful or more refined.
However, those dated, honey oak cabinets you have from the 1980's and 90's are not coming back into fashion… sorry. Today's wood cabinets have clean, modern lines and more muted tones. They are also used in combination with other cabinet colors, like creamy whites, off-blacks, sage greens, and smoky blues.
In order to bleach the wood, you want to oppose the orange color or brassiness in the wood. So apply a water-based stain with a neutralizing greenish tone. It doesn't need to be green, but it does need to counteract orange. Since the stain is just for this purpose, you can dilute it with a lot of water.
How do you lighten old orange pine or white wash pine floors and furniture? We recommend two options to make the pine a bleached, pale colour, without the use of harmful chemicals: Palette (water based) Wood dye, overcoated with a quality water based floor varnish.
Color/Appearance: Heartwood is golden to bright yellow, which inevitably ages to a darker medium brown with time: primarily due to exposure to ultraviolet light. See the article Preventing Color Changes in Exotic Woods for more details. Grain/Texture: Grain is straight, with a fine to medium texture.
Orange-toned wood + blue: As these colors are directly opposite each other on the color wheel, bright, intense blue will highlight orange tones in the wood.
To downplay the orange in your wood flooring, try using a color wheel to determine which hues will best complement it. Try adding neutral colors like gray, white, and cream to tone down the warmth created by the orange. A cool hue like teal or blue can also be used to create a pleasing contrast.
Use Purple or Blue Shampoos
It's a simple matter of color theory, relying on the complementary colors of a color wheel to cancel out unwanted tones. "Using a color correcting purple shampoo will undoubtedly cancel out the overly warm, orange tones and keep that cooler, brighter blonde you desire," says Cunningham.
Saturate a small cloth with the FEED-N-WAX Wood Polish and Conditioner and wipe evenly all over the wood surface. Let wax stand for at least 20 minutes and then wipe off all the excess. There you go, just like brand new!
If your goal is to update the look of your existing cabinets, the cheapest route is to simply reface them. This process involves either stripping the stain or paint from the existing cabinets and adding new stain, varnish or paint; in some cases, you might even want to refinish the cabinets with a stick-on veneer.
Paint Kitchen Cabinets
But a brighter makeover doesn't necessarily mean replacing those gloomy boxes with all-new ones. As long as the frames and doors are structurally sound, you can clean them up and brush on a fresh coat of paint—and within a weekend take that kitchen from dreary to sunny.