Salsa Dancing Kitchen

Orange kitchen cabinets are muy caliente thanks to a great paint color and some very cool tile.

Questions about paint color can dominate any discussion – color is that powerful. In the case of this bold and original kitchen, color is topic number one. The beautiful inset orange kitchen cabinets with concealed hinges are painted in Benjamin Moore Aura Salsa Dancing. The walls are painted in BM Oatmeal. As designer Melanie Coddington told an interviewer for House Beautiful magazine (where the kitchen first appeared) she was a bit nervous about the color at first, though the client was “fearless.” What a joy!

Another aspect of this highly refined kitchen was especially interesting to me: the idea for the cabinet color started with Walker Zanger’s Contessa Pagoda tile in paprika and black on a cream ground. Perhaps I relate to this because my kitchen concept also started with my multi-color handmade tile in a similar size – 4-5/8” squares.

As designers know, special tile can be terrific inspiration but a kitchen also can turn on a fabulous range as a focal point. The black La Cornue Chateâu 120, with matching hood, is all that. It should be no surprise the color of the range is also pulled from the tile and this view with the tile, the range and the cabinets all together pinpoints the color scheme. Even an orange as muted as this paprika might be a walk on the wild side with black in some houses. The strong light in Northern California would temper it, I think. And the orange even suggests an updated version of a 1930s California Mediterranean house kitchen, right down to the arched doorway.

The refrigerator wall shows how strongly color can speak. The water dispensing door is a newish SubZero feature (not my fave) but this view shows off the nut-colored marble tile floor which neatly matches the walnut top of the narrow custom island with a sleek open lyre-shape bottom.

(Source: HB)

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