Should You Really Avoid Painting Your Kitchen Yellow?

Whether you're the one doing the cooking or the one enjoying it, a home kitchen is a place of creativity, comfort, and community. Kitchens are a home's haven — each morning and night, the sizzling sounds of charred meats, the vivacious atmosphere of freshly chopped herbs, and the cozy ambiance of simmering pots of stew remind us that every day there is something sensational and soulful to look forward to. Simply put — the kitchen is a sacred space, and how you decorate it determines its overall ethos. While each person's kitchen aesthetic is unique to their personality and spirit, there's one color you should avoid painting your kitchen — yellow.

Although no shade on the color wheel is wrong, there's a time and place for each. According to color psychology — a framework that outlines how colors inform human behavior and emotion – yellow is cheery, warm, and energizing. But that's only one side of the coin; on the other side, the negative emotional impacts of yellow include frustration, intensity, and aggression. Cooking complicated meals can be overwhelming, hot, and topsy-turvy, and being immersed in a color that bolsters those sensations can lead to a total meltdown — no thanks. Amy Youngblood of Amy Youngblood Interiors tells Homes & Gardens, "You really want your kitchen to be a place of enjoyment and peace. There is already enough going on in your kitchen, and you certainly don't need a feeling of chaos."

So if yellow is out, then what kitchen color is in? Here's some good news — your options aren't limited. You can paint your kitchen with many colors to promote feelings of ease, friendliness, and comfort.

If you want to foster a sense of peace and relaxation in your kitchen, opt for cooling tones. Shades of green are said to impart harmony and growth into the kitchen atmosphere — perfect for budding chefs who need to maintain balance and stability as they nurture their culinary skills (a practice that truly never ends).

Blue shades facilitate a sense of steadiness and strength, ideal for foodies looking to cultivate confidence in the kitchen. Light blue shades, in particular, can achieve this effect while prompting feelings of relaxation; cool, calm, and collected is a surefire way to win the race.

Purple is perfect for chefs who enjoy beauty, abundance, and wealth as it draws on feelings of opulence and royalty. If you're someone who likes the finer things in life, purple is grounding and beautiful in equal parts.

If you can't make up your mind, you can never go wrong with neutrals. Off-white, cream, and various shades of grey are mild enough to let your personality, food, and interactions set the tone of the kitchen space. Plus, neutral colors are great for threading fun pops of color throughout the kitchen without worrying too much about how they blend with your base color.

If you love yellow, you may be feeling discouraged — but not all hope is lost! In addition to color psychology, there is also a science behind how color affects your appetite, and in small doses, yellow stimulates and rouses hunger. So, while it's not suited to be the central color of your kitchen, you can still find ways to incorporate it into your kitchen.

For starters, yellow appliances like toasters, stand mixers, spatulas, ladles, and even pots and pans are a great way to invite the color into your kitchen. Another way to bring life into your kitchen is by decorating it with art. Consider accentuating your kitchen space with yellow-centric paintings, lamps with yellow shades, posters of vintage advertisements with pops of yellow, or colors of your friends and family in yellow clothing or surrounded by a yellow setting. It's not just yellow material items that can bring the spirit of yellow into your kitchen. Place baskets around the room filled with fruits and veggies like bananas, bell peppers, squash, and lemons for a more organic hit of yellow.

Whether you fill your kitchen with the scents of a slow cooker pot roast or the familiar aroma of a classic apple pie, how you develop its aesthetic can inform the overall ambiance of this sacred space. But if you want to prevent a chaotic kitchen, avoid using yellow as the primary color. But as always — to each their own!