• A Red and White Kitchen With Black Accentsred kitchen image by Leonid Nyshko from Fotolia.com
  
  The effectiveness of a color scheme in any one room in a house depends upon the color schemes of all the other rooms. You might find a house with color schemes of strong, contrasting colors in room after room visually exhausting. If, however, the predominating color schemes in most rooms strike a balance between warm pastels--wheat and linen colors--and cool pastels--light color grays--a kitchen with a high-energy black and red color scheme provides a welcome counterpoint.
  
  

Red and Black Accents

• Create a contemporary kitchen design with a balance of warm and cool pastels, then introduce strong red and black accents that add energy and drama. Bleached oak kitchen cabinets and light gray walls take up most of the visual field. Add black granite countertops, simple black door and drawer pulls and a burgundy red Le Cornue stove.
  
  

An Update on a White Kitchen

• An update on a 1950s all white kitchen features the white walls and white painted cabinets of the modern kitchen of that period, but adds anachronistic dark red linoleum floors and polished concrete countertops treated with black concrete acid stain.
  
  

An Urban Kitchen

• An all black and red kitchen, particularly a small galley or open plan galley kitchen, works well in a setting such as a downtown Manhattan or Los Angeles loft, where these colors connect to similarly strong colors in the urban environment. This restricted color scheme might become visually overwhelming in a large kitchen. A small black and red kitchen becomes a welcome accent in a large, otherwise monochromatic loft space. You can further dramatize the differences between the kitchen and the rest of the loft by emphasizing hard, shiny and reflective finishes in the kitchen: stainless steel appliances and countertops, black floor tiles and high-gloss red walls and ceiling.
  
  

Horizontal and Vertical

• When designing an all red and black kitchen, use a strong design principle that organizes the colors and textures of all the architectural elements. Make all horizontal surfaces red, all vertical surfaces black, or vice versa. Paint the walls and cabinets a glossy mandarin red. Use matte granite slabs on the countertops and matte granite tiles on the floor. This opposition of both color--red and black--and texture--gloss and matte--heightens the dramatic effect.
  
  

Black and Red Checkerboard

• Buy small scale linoleum or vinyl tiles that measure 1 to 3 inches on a side. A black and red checkerboard kitchen floor pattern using these small tiles hides dirt very well and adds a note of playfulness. Repeat the pattern on a full-height backsplash. Vary this design by deliberately disorganizing the alternating black and red tiles in front of doors--as if the tiles had come through the doorway randomly, then organized themselves into a checkerboard pattern as they progressed into the room.
  
  

An Architectural Color Division

• Paint two adjacent walls a glossy black. Paint the other two walls a glossy Chinese red. Put black cabinets in front of the black walls and red cabinets in front of the red wells, or do the opposite: put black cabinets in front of red walls and red cabinets in front of black walls.