Colors can be so funny! I just painted my kitchen - looking for a cream/tan to cover up a yellow/gold (that I haven't liked since I painted it, but haven't hated enough to re-do). I got paint samples of BM Putnam Ivory, but even with 2 coats, when it was next to the yellow, it came out gray, in both sunlight and artificial. But when I painted a different sample color around the PI, eliminating the yellow from sight, the very same PI came out exactly the warm tan I was looking for. For me, painting a poster board didn't help at all, because the slight texture on our walls gives a much different look than the smooth board.

Kim, one of the problems I deal with every day is one-dimensional color theory being applied to the three-dimensional. It's like trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. Pound hard enough and you can probably get that peg wedged in that round hole to the point that you can say it fits. The square peg will be battered. Corners clumsily whittled and splintered. By no means a good fit in that round hole, but it made it in none the less. I think there is much work to be done. :-) Intensity, chromaticity or chroma, saturation are *for the most part* interchangeable terms in wall color world. They basically deal with the same. Brightness and dullness. Vivid or weak. Vibrant or muted. How has a hue been altered to create a color and what is the resulting color's relationship to black. Or, you could also look at it as how close has the color been moved towards a neutral gray. Nuance is a very important term to understand relative to paint color in particular. It's a two-dimensional term. Could say it sums up light/dark and chroma/saturation/intensity all in one visual evaluation. It's a great term to use to talk about the mood and character one sees in and feels from a color. Hue and color are not the same thing and are not interchangeable. IMO any way. Pink and red are not the same color, but they both have the same root hue, red. Hue is what you start with. It's the genesis of a color. Color is what results when you do something to the root hue. Defining what the primary or root hues are can make for very interesting color conversation. lol! :-) It can depend on which corner of color world you are talking about too. Whether you are talking additive or subtractive. Each of those terms can have further detail, can be used to deconstruct color further and for more specific application. And there are many more color terms in the same boat. i.e. What's the difference between luminance and reflectance? Is there a difference? Some people use the word saturation solely to speak to how close to white a color has been moved. Chroma strictly to describe pureness of color, how pure or muddied is the color. It goes on and on... Some would simply classify it as semantics. Others would blast the semantics argument and flat out call it too lazy to learn *proper* color vocabulary. Hard part is getting agreement on exactly what *proper* color vocabulary is.

I've had it that way for several years and it works fine. Mostly it's due to the overall layout - I only have one corner in my kitchen (there is a walk way at each "corner". My fridge is sxs so doors swing both ways. Have about 4" extra inches between, so the fridge door won't hit the oven handles unless someone really pushed the fridge door back farther than it naturally goes. I have a small island in front of the appliances, and it works great as a landing are for both - and I have the ends of the counters on the adjacent walls. I have no counter space on the wall that the fridge and ovens are on. What I love most about this arrangement is that we recessed the opening 2' into the room behind, so it appears the wall oven, fridge and pantry are built into the back wall of the kitchen, and don't stick out into the room. View from the dining room (back entrance, not the main one) before I started work on the dining room.

@ erett The travertine-look tile is too blue for your kitchen. Sorry but that's going to be one BIG clash. The more marble-y looking one is the best match to the counter tops AND the cabinets. Right now the cabinets are driving everything towards the creams (yellow based white). As for running right over top of the current tile, I am going to caution you to think about this one. Please take the time to purchase an 8ft long level (the metal things with the glass bubble in it) and stretch it across your current floor. See how FLAT and SMOOTH it is. Vinyl is highly flexible. It LOVES to dip down into hollows (grout lines and pits in the tile) and hump over edges (each edge of each tile). We call this telegraphing = horrible thing to have happen when you spend money on a 'perfect' floor. I can tell the tiles have some texture to them. That texture has to be 'knocked down'. That is to say you need to grind them (all that dust you were trying to avoid = still going to happen). And then they have to be filled (leveling cement = SLC). But before you do that you probably have to prime them. Each and every 'high point' of the tiles (normally seen at each and every grout line) has to lie flat against the next tile = filling all grout lines. Whew. The cost of doing that = $2-$3/sf (depends one where you live). The cost of removing the tile = $2-$3/sf. The benefit of removing the tile = you never have to deal with them ever again = very good thing.