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Home / Kitchen

50s kitchen flashback design: Color riot!

pam kueber - Updated: August 9, 2021

Retro Renovation stopped publishing in 2021; these stories remain for historical information, as potential continued resources, and for archival purposes.

flashback-kitchen-oct-30.jpgThis week’s flashback kitchen is a riot! Takeaway design tips:

  1. Well, the color combo’s of course. Similarly deep hues of pink, orchid/lavender and blue. Note how the pink is picked up throughout, to keep your eye “dancing” through the kitchen.
  2. The display shelves built into the soffit are extraordinary. This would take some doing, but you can see how it is possible. The class looks to be rimmed in chrome – and don’t miss the can lights tucked into the shelves. Wow!
  3. The window treatment – a bamboo style shade but incorporating the colors throughout the kitchen, really ties things together. I am adding this type of shade to my research list; stay tuned.
  4. Notice how they have built out the corner with drywall, then tiled it – rather than trying to fit the cabinets together. This is a great solution if you have the steel cabinets but not the corners. It also adds visual dynamism.
  5. Tile used on walls as  well as backsplash. We do see this on occasion.
  6. Note the cabinets here are both pink and orchid colored. In reality – this fixture is really a Refrigerator! Companies like GE made refrigerators to fit like wall cabinets. You can still find these now and then, I presume they can be renovated. This goes on my list for the future, too…
  7. And last, notice how the floor is relatively neutral, it appears to be cream edged by the cabinets, and a beige edged by black in the center. Clearly, grounding this color riot kitchen into more earthy floor colors is wise.

However, they have not totally chickened out by making the floor all one color. I think it really works.

CATEGORIES:
Kitchen

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  1. christi Harris says

    December 5, 2010 at 9:19 am

    I LOVE the refrigerator! It would be amazing with our “Bewitched” Flair stove. (Why do fridges have to be so ugly nowadays! I love the retro 30’s style, ala Rachel Ray’s kitchen, but it wouldn’t go with my kitchen at all.

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