01
What a colour change does to a room
Cabinets are the biggest surface in a kitchen. Changing their colour changes how the whole room reads: a dark espresso kitchen that swallowed the light turns bright, a yellowed white turns clean, a busy cherry goes quiet next to the same counters.
In Westmount, near-black espresso shaker cabinets went bright white; the room is much brighter with the same boxes.
02
Colours my clients chose
The colour can come from a Benjamin Moore swatch: the Westmount kitchen is Renner Italia 2K in Chantilly Lace OC-65. Here is what clients picked:
- Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace OC-65, Westmount: espresso shaker to bright white.
- “White chocolate”, Dorval: a warm white on a classic cream kitchen with lit glass uppers.
- Swiss Coffee: a soft off-white on a cream MDF kitchen, May 2026.
- White uppers with soft sage lowers: a cherry raised-panel kitchen, July 2026.
03
Choosing a colour that works with what stays
Your counters, backsplash and floor stay, so the cabinet colour has to live with them. Look at samples in your kitchen, in daylight and at night, next to the counter. A white that looks clean on a swatch can turn cold next to a warm granite, or yellow next to a cool quartz.
Tell me what stays and send photos; I will tell you what I have seen work.
04
Two-tone kitchens
Different colours for uppers and lowers, or just the island, work well when the room has enough light. The cherry kitchen on this site went white on top and soft sage below, and the butcher-block island top stayed natural wood. Samples help decide.
05
Going from dark to light
Dark wood and espresso finishes are the hardest to cover, and they are the reason for the shellac primer: two coats of BIN seal the old colour and the wood tannins so a white stays white. After primer sanding, two coats of Renner 2K in your colour go on.
Light to light is simpler: in Dorval the cream kitchen was already pale, and the change was a fresher, cleaner white.
06
What stays the same
Counters, floors, backsplash, plumbing and layout. Hardware can change at the same time; when the spacing differs, the old holes are filled before primer.
From a client
“The cabinet colors look great and turned out exactly as discussed.”
