The Unexpected Cabinet Color Trend That's Making A Splash In Kitchens

Mustard is on everyone's lips in kitchens all across America at the moment, but not in the way you might think. The sometimes spicy, often bright, generally yellow-adjacent hue is sprouting up all over those culinary corners of the design world, just like the botanical from whence the color gets its name. And cabinets, long the province of stark white or generic "landlord" wood grain, provide a unique surface to make such a splash.

Yes, yellow, writ large, occasionally appears among colors you should never paint a kitchen, but those are lists, not binding contracts. Mustard diverges from yellow proper throughout its many different possible finishes. Sure, you could choose the sunny French's mustard color indistinguishable from Crayola, or you could expand your palette to include a warmer amber hue, or a mustard with deeper mahogany notes. In either case, it's a unique zag to add to the ideas for your kitchen remodel.

As always, trends come and go, so you have to love the idea of mustard-colored yellow kitchen cabinets aside from their spotlight moment. Depending on the degree of renovation, most people will only give their cabinets a few updates or upgrades throughout a lifetime in a home. Said renos are also time-consuming, expensive, or, most likely, both, so one must be truly committed to a future in a sandwich condiment-influenced kitchen to pull the tab on this one. Only then may the swatching begin.

If you are blessed with a multi-windowed kitchen awash in natural light throughout the day, skip the French's pigment. A flat, primary color like this will be too intense when blasted with sunshine. A muted, dusty mustard is a better choice for your cabinets. Likewise, if your kitchen is on the smaller, darker size, skip the moodier mustards for something on the brighter end of the spectrum. And, if manufactured or even painted mustard cabinets seem just a bit too permanent, you can also introduce the element with another bubbling throwback trend – freestanding kitchen furniture. Also known as unfitted kitchens, these spaces mix and match untethered pieces like mustard-colored cupboard or hutches for a casually elegant look you can enjoy without the long-term commitment.