I'm not sure I understand your quesiton, but if you're asking what will good with orangey oak cabinets, a lot of people suggest sagey greens. I have honey oak cabinets and have painted our walls a soft yellow. Yellow is my favorite color so of course I love it and love too the way it looks with our cabinets. In regards to finding the right tones, find something you love, a picture for example that has the colors you like in it. I used a sunflower for my color inspiration throughout our downstairs and it's worked out perfectly.

If you go to the Benjamin Moore paint site you can pick a soft yellow and find the paints that will work with it. Most colors work with wood. The tough part is picking the right one. Yes, I think a soft yellow would work.

Your cabinets are orange oak. Orange is a warm color, so to balance (counteract) the color of your cabinets, you need a cool color on the wall.

Green is best, because green and orange are opposites on the color wheel.

Many people will suggest a sage green, but I find most sage greens to be too pastel to anchor orange oak.

I would suggest a deeper green. Maybe even an olive green.

You seem to have your heart set on yellow, but yellow is a warm color and will only make your oak cabinets look MORE orange.

I don't care for the window treatments in the picture below, but it's a good example of how the green balances orange oak.

Hi
Thanks for the replies and apologies for the confusing way in which I worded my question.

I don't want greens because greens will make the orange in the cabinets stand out. This is what I want to avoid. I want the orange to be less so I thought that choosing a yellow would help to make the orange less obvious?

lukkiirish... may I ask what color yellow you used?

Thanks
Linda

I also have Honey Oak cabinets. I painted my kitchen a soft, buttery yellow and love it. I get many compliments on the color and how it blends in with the cabinets. The color I used was called Butter. It was a Waverly paint color from Lowe's (in their Signature Line paint). The ceiling was painted Pale Ivory (also a Waverly color - Signature Line).

Click on this post and scroll down to superchick's (or is it gardenchick?) kitchen. It's the last picture on the thread.

She used a soft gold/yellow with her oak cabs. I did the same in my last house.

There are two schools of thought on this. One says to contrast with green and the other to blend with a similar color.

Neither is wrong. They are just different looks.

Here is a link that might be useful: Superchick's kitchen

parma42

Thanks for the link. gardenchick used SW Believable Buff . I checked out color match site and a similar color is actually Monroe Bsique.

I am going to check around for WT fabrics to go with Monroe Bisque and in the meantime, this will give me the chance to live with the monroe bisque.

The Monroe Bisque certainly brightens up the kitchen which ia now painted Quincy Tan

Thanks. You've given me lots to think about. So glad to have your input.

Linda

My vote is for SW Blonde. Painted it several years ago & still love it.

There are two ways to tackle a problem with cabinets that are an 'off' color that is not attractive to you.

One way, as has been already suggested, is to use an opposite color like RH Deep Sage.

The other way is to bring in more of the same color in a brighter tone. For instance to make orangey oak cabinets look more brown - paint your walls orange. Yup. Of course this bold move could only be pulled off with the right architecture and style and taking into account the whole space. It may not be the overall look you want but it would work. Don't be quick to discount the idea though.

I painted my central hall orange and now the wood trim and doors look browner and not orangey like they did when I bought it and the PO had the hall painted pastel.

Can you post pics?

We put Monroe Bisque in our previous house's orange-oak kitchen when we put it up for sale. I see absolutely no reason why you couldn't use red for accessories with it - we used bits of plum here and there because the adjoining room was painted with BM Wet Concrete (a grayed lavender). Here are a couple of pictures. Note that my camera was(is) old and skews a bit pinkish, and the room was completely stripped for selling, we were still living there so keeping the place pristine-clean was a higher priority than anything else. I didn't accessorize (just some cheap little things like dishtowels, a place setting at the snack counter, etc.) until we moved out, and I can't find any pictures of that.

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I had a midtone slatey blue - I am pretty sure it was BM Buckland Blue - test-splotched in that kitchen for several months and it looked great with the cabinets. The blue balanced out the orange in the cabinets and sort of reduced the intensity of both, perhaps because the color values were similar. We just didn't get around to it before we realized that we had to sell the house, and a nice GW-er gave me a few gallons of Monroe Bisque so that's what we used and it came out well!

GREEN OR Silver Sage
I used Silver Sage in a bedroom with a wall of orangey oak and it looks so good.
Really improved the look of the oak cabinets
I even had a guest comment on how the oak looks good with the wall color
Same orange oak you have
dont go yellow that is in same orange yellow family
you have to go opposite color wheel.. something cool (green/blue)

I have orange oak cabinets and used SW jonquil. It is a buttery yellow with no underlying orange. We love it. Orangey yellows and golds looked awful with the orange oak, but this yellow is just right.