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.
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.
Cool Down Oak Cabinetry
Oak cabinetry often features an orange finish that can make your kitchen appear outdated.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.
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 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. Additionally, you could choose to add items of different textures, such as rugs and throw blankets, to break up the color.
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.
As you can see from the color wheel, the color opposite to orange it on the color wheel is blue, as well as blue-green. So the way to neutralize the orange would therefore be to use blue-based colors.
Blue and blue based colors and toners cancel out orange and yellow orange. Violet, purple and purple based toners cancel out yellow and pale yellow.
Creamsicle + Pale Blue + White
Working as an accent color, the orange hue is paired with pastel colors, including pale blue and soft lilac, which are perfect complements because of their lighter tones. These soothing colors, along with cool white walls as a backdrop, help soften the bright orange.
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.
You can give your wood cabinets a quick makeover with a fresh coat of stain. Using a different color stain—even as simple as going one shade darker or lighter—can give your kitchen, bathroom or other rooms in your home the new, updated look you want.
So yellow toned beiges, orange toned beiges and grays with a warm, creamy beige undertone will work well. Avoid the green toned beiges as they start to look flat against the warmth of the cabinets.
Mix orange with red and yellow!
Orange pigments range from yellowish to reddish and even into the pinks and browns. The basic color wheel for how to mix orange is a mixture of primary colors red and yellow. Adding a third primary hue (blue) begins to lower the saturation and neutralize the color (make them dull).
Pine takes on a pale yellow-orange tone after exposure to sunlight. Most finishes exacerbate the problem leaving wood which ages to a "cigarette yellow" tone. The best way to create a pale bleached effect is to treat with a thin coat of diluted White Wood Dye after sanding.
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.
As it turns out, you can use a blonde hair dye to neutralize your orange hair — the secret is to look for a shade that's ashy. Ashy, cool undertones are the key to canceling out the warm, unflattering orange tones that currently adorn your strands.
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.
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.
Start by sanding down the pine surface to create a smooth base for staining. Next, apply an oak-colored wood stain evenly across the pine surface. Finally, finish off by applying a clear coat of polyurethane to protect the newly created oak finish from wear and tear!