This series of blogs, published each Friday takes a colour palette from Design Seeds as inspiration for a colour scheme for an interior or exterior – with us picking some key accessories to suit your new space. Get decorating this weekend with help from our Weekend Colour Inspiration mood board.

This weeks Weekend Colour Inspiration board comes in the form of some Edible tones:

And because this is an edible tone colour scheme, we are looking at how it can be translated into a design for a kitchen space.

Kitchens are a great example of where forward planning really comes into play – there is no use having loads of cupboards if open shelves are more suiting to the way you live and cook. Drawers are very useful (and if planned well can create a kitchen with visual balance and stacks of useful space) and we are huge fans of the good old fashioned larder as a piece of freestanding statement furniture. Whatever you do with your kitchen, ensure you truthfully examine the way you use the space so your designer can get a full understanding of your requirements.

First up, cabinets. There are a huge range of cabinets available to suit all style tastes and budgets, but the important thing to look for is the FSC mark – ensure the timber used comes from a responsible source. This ‘Lava’ style from manufacturers Manhattan is a great dark grey to sit nicely in our colour scheme and would be great for our base cabinets.

We like open shelving and top cabinets in kitchens, so to compliment the dark Lava cabinets below, we would use a complimentary cabinet such as this grey driftwood range for the wall cabinets, also by Manhattan.

Do not be afraid to mix ranges between your base and wall cabinets to create a lovely textured look, just ensure they compliment nicely. Sit the samples together to make sure they look great.

Appliances should be AA rated to ensure that they are as energy efficient as possible, and with the scheme above we would choose a nice stainless steel example, just like this great multi function dual fuel range cooker from Smeg (model SY4110-8), which is A rated across the board.

Worktops are another key choice for a kitchen and can dramatically transform any design. As the rest of our palette is pretty cool and we have concentrated on the greys, we would get a bit of warmth from the browns in the colour scheme with this lovely coffee bamboo worktop from Simply Bamboo.

Flooring can also add a huge amount of visual impact to a kitchen and should be chosen to suit the spills likely in the area. To give the floor a nice warmth and a bit of bounce, we would specify a cork flooring, many of which can be used with underfloor heating and is a great and more eco friendly alternative to some of the cheaper laminates. This sand cork example from City cork is a great pale colour to pick up the lights in our colour scheme.

Lighting is also very important in a kitchen – you want a good range of working lights, focus lights and feature lights. We like our kitchens to float (so the space feels bigger) so we would wall mount the base units and underlight them with LED strip lighting, like this example from Brighton based Lightfoot LED.

Walls in kitchens tend to need more cleaning than most other rooms. With this in mind, we recommend that wall areas in working spaces (like the oven wall) are fully tiled. One of our favourites is the classic white metro tile, which works with both modern and vintage styled kitchens.

A contemporary kitchen space with a bit of warmth and a great deal of texture – plan it and it will work as good as it looks.

(images via associated links)