Harry Murray
I think I’ve been living under a rock because I had come to the conclusion that honey oak cabinets were an 80s trend, because they are mostly not being installed in kitchens in Vancouver anymore. How I know this, is I keep getting images with questions showing newly installed oak cabinets.
Not a traditional honey oak kitchen but this has a nice creamy countertop.
My first choice would be an off-white or cream countertop and coordinating subway tiled backsplash.
Bright white would look just a little too modern with the countrified look of standard oak cabinets and I would definitely not choose anything that resembled Carrara marble. Notice the great layout, pretty windows, also the abundant light which is what makes the white in this room look wonderful instead of dingy.
The average tract home with newly installed oak cabinets probably doesn’t look like this. I always resist installing finishes that are so bossy, you end up stuck to only two colour options (for example) until the day it comes out.
If you want to update the look, you could consider a hand scraped look and go lighter or darker than your existing honey oak cabinets.
Since honey oak cabinets are NOT trendy, I would not install maple (too contemporary) or grey or espresso brown.
This movie was made in 1993 and Sam’s boathouse (above) had maple cabinets with matching woodwork and floors throughout, gray walls, countertops and backsplash. It was the 90s when gray was trendy but the grey created a nice balance of warm and cool combined with the yellow cabinets and floors.
