Gold, yellow, or ochre might be nice.

I lived in a house with a mid to pale green paint on most walls and it was boring - I think white would be great or else a more substantial green - I love Benjamin Moore's Nantucket Grey - lively and looks great against wood and white.

You know I actually really like the color, it's sophisticated, way better than "renter white." dark isn't always bad, use it to your advantage, make it sexy.

I would go for all white walls in the kitchen for sure. If you empty off the top of the fridge and the tops of the cabinets it will be a little less cluttered or "dark" in the kitchen.
I like the green walls in the living room though--looks soft and earthy with the new floors. Maybe a lighter shade of the same color would lighten it a bit.

I like the potrack on your wall. Where did you get it from ?

I think the green is great too, but if you're really unhappy with it, perhaps try a lighter derivative of the green. If you're having a serious darkness problem with the walls, floor, and lack of natural light, I would use a yellow-based cream. Just make sure there is a perceptible contrast between the cream and the moulding color. I used a light, butter colored cream on the walls in a foyer that lacks natural light. It's worked very well by reflecting what little natural light there is in the area and the artificial light.

The color is nice - it's the dark cabinets that are making it all look too dark to me, and making the walls white is probably going to make them look starker and more dramatic. I'd paint the cabinets white, but if you don't want to, keep the walls and embrace the darkness as Bryan said. Oh, and clear out all that piled up stuff!

A darker wall color will make the dark cabinets less shocking. Review the ceiling fixture, is it providing enough and the right kind of light? Maybe a different approach there will lighten the look.

Hey Candice, I live in Seattle too. With our long grey days (though not today, it is gorgeous!) you need to have color that reflects light rather than increasing the (what can be) dreary din.

I think a bright white would really throw off, and cheapen, the other lovely improvements in your home. The green you currently have is lovely, but leans towards a grey-green rather than a green with more white in it that would reflect light.

If you like green I would stick with a light, more spring color. If you like the sage aspect then I would seek out a color with a bit more white balance. Benjamin Moore Historical Colors has some excellent choices for Seattle.

I have in some rooms of my apartment, especially my windowless dark bathroom, Farrow and Ball Archive 27, a creamy khaki color that is very dune like while playing well off the white and seafoam accents in the room. I would suggest a color like this, or even a bit lighter than that.

You can go a little darker than the taupe of the kitchen without feeling like you live in a cave.

Also just a suggestion but perhaps more light and from above would help the room feel bigger and brighter. You could hang a light fixture, even one that plugged into the wall in the corner between the High Fidelity poster and the shelving.

Good Luck!

I'm in Seattle as well and when I bought my condo it had the same taupey walls that were really dark. There are so many shades of white that could work -- I would go to Miller paints in Ballard and get the Devine samples and grafetti the walls to see what color works best. I used icing (a cool white) and vanilla (a warm white).

Thank you so much for the comments.

Yes, the clutter is hideious. I'm on a purging /ebay sell-off binge, but didn't want to wait for AT feedback.
Would you really go white w/the caibnets? The fronts are solid wood and its feels "wrong" to paint them. I own, so i can.

I think the points about a whiter green or a yellow might work. There is so little natural light and NO overhead lighting wired in the living or bedroom, awful!

Any thoughts on painting the expedit (which i realized isn't in the pictures that got posted) to match the wall color? It's the 7x7 in brown/black and its a room divider between the kitchen and living.

The pot rack is Storables brand.

If you thought the color of the walls was making the place look dark, why on earth did you install new DARK wood floors?

I'd paint them, maybe other people think it's sacrilege, but they're not antiques right? They're just good quality modern kitchen cabinets. If they don't work for you, what's the point?

don't paint them, it won't look as polished as you would want. i as having a similar problem and i just painted our bedroom in Pratt & Lambert Granita. its a warm very light gray. something about it brightens the place.

I would urge you to NOT paint the cabinets. It is an enormous undertaking. What with the sanding and the priming and sanding again and multiple coats of paint ... ugh. And don't forget that you have have to wait a couple of days between coats so the the paint can dry thoroughly. It's an absolute nightmare unless you hire someone else to do it for you (and I shudder to think how much that would cost). No, the cabinets are lovely. Unless you have a lot of time or money to throw away, I'd keep them as-is.

A bit of paint on the walls (and only the walls!) would help enormously. I agree with the others who suggested a shade of yellow on the walls. I did this recently & I'm still amazed by how much warmer the place feels. I used Benjamin Moore's Aura line in Safari. It's pretty pricey, but they have small test pots you can buy to try it out first.

PS: I don't think it would be a good idea to paint the walls white simply because it would contrast too much with the wood tones. Suddenly that wood would look darker and flatter and probably make the place look more dreary. A color that brings warmth and light to the room AND which compliments the wood tones would be best.

White will cheapen the look in a very "rental" way. (And I speak as someone who rents.) Those dark cabinets need some color on the walls to help them blend in -- they will LOOM and HULK like a teenager at the "awkward" stage if put next to white or off-white. (And I speak from recent experience on that one.)

You need a warmer and/or brighter color on the walls. If you don't like yellow or beige, a more yellow-toned green would work, but so would tangerine or pumpkin.

Another possibility is to just bring more lighting into the kitchen. Condo kitchens often read "dark" because their location means they are dark.

(I seem to be pretty much reiterating CSalt's comments. But that's because she or he is right. ;-) )

I see you have a tile backsplash in a shade of the same taupe. So maybe you should just go for a much lighter shade of the color in the kitchen, almost an off white. It's hard to think of a warm color that would look good against that tile. Put some lights under the cupboards; I think that would help a lot.

If you were up for a big project, what about continuing the backsplash tile across the wall? That would brighten things up. You could do stripes all the way down.

Man, this feedback is really constructive.

Any suggestions on what to swap my overhead for? I don't want track or flourescent. The only barrier to can lights is cost of installation.

Thank you so much for the specific paint names / brands, that will give me a starting point to put up swatches.

I would go with a soft yellow, personally. Light and friendly, doing most of what a white would, a little more pop and personality.

And I would worry about installing more lighting LONG before I painted those cabinets.

Maybe I'm projecting from experiences in our last apartment (a condo conversion of similar vintage), but something about your kitchen is giving me the impression that more than paint color frustrates you. You might want to do (or re-do) some of the AT Cure thinking work -- the survey and the style tray, in particular -- before committing to anything that involves real work (particularly painting the cabinets).

It's actually a nice-LOOKING kitchen as-is (though in need of more light), but a nice-looking kitchen that isn't "you" can be more frustrating than a crappy kitchen, because no one feels any compunction about dramatically changing a crappy kitchen.

Wende,

You hit a nerve, I’ve actually come to hate these ruin-vated kitchens. I love the color of the cabinet stain but hate the black appliances, and dark tiled countertops. I would have happily paid the same price for this unit in its original run-down 1969 condition.
I’ve never done tile or I’d rip out the counter and do it all in subway tile with a new accent color on the backsplash. And swap the ceramic-top for gas, and put about a dozen dimmable cans in this place.
But…. In the meantime this wall color is too grey for the quality of light I get. The Seattleites nailed that issue and I’m off to Miller Paints today to get samples. Last night I finished the purge and ran LED Christmas lights along the top of the cabinets so that all you see is the light they give off. I’m going to look for an alternative light source to mount on top of the expedit that will bring more light to both sides of the divider.

p.s.
Some of the vocab you're using has lost me.
"AT Cure thinking work"
"style tray"

How about some under cabinet lighting? You could just paint the taupe tiles with the paint you would continue on the wall or stamp the taupe tiles with the same wall color. A Sherwin Williams color called Cat's Whiskers - a pale taupe, from a Martha color strip is neither beige nor gray but has a hint of pink and was used in my small kitchen to deemphasize boundaries and coordinate with my pink (!) counters, but I've grown very fond of it and it might work for you throughout the apartment.

I wouldn't go with white. I would choose something with a higher light saturation than the green. It's to near the gray spectrum and that's why it seems to make everything look dark. A green would work but make it something in a lighter tint. Good luck.

It sounds like what you did was great. I was going to suggest under cabinet lights, but... Will you show us some "after" pictures when you're done?

I will absoluetly keep posting, you can see past progress here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22843600@N00/sets/72157603729285244/show/

This is my portfolio so far. Including before-befores taken when we saw the space for the first time.

No after's for awhile i think, but more durings to come.

I will continue to post.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22843600@N00/sets/72157603729285244/show/
Early befores and soon progress photos.

I think your instincts are correct. I moved to Seattle two years ago - love the city but think there must be something in the water that deludes design folk into thinking "Pacific Northwest" colors (which basically contain the same amount of grey as the sky) are a good idea....they are not.....I work in an office w these colors and it is depressing. I suggest a wonderful Benjamin Moore color called "Devon Cream" ..it is a gorgeous shade of, well, cream...it is very soft, reflects light and will go nicely w the dark wood.

I feel for you with that dark kitchen problem. When I first moved to Berkeley for my freshman year and lived on the bottom floor of a 3 story apt with ZERO natural light and PAINTED BLACK cabinets (by previous tenants) in the kitchen. I was ready to transfer somewhere sunnier.

As a kitchen designer, I would use Fluorescent lights below in warm white, iwth a low profile to fit underneath the frame in the front of the upper cabinets. As soon as you get the area above cleared out, put rope light LED lights and you will be stunned by how great this looks.

Don’t paint the cabinets—it is a major PITA project and the finish will never be as good or durable as that done in the factory that made the cabinets.

Then you can put in another light fixture in the ceiling—I would use something with halogens and bounce them off the cabinet faces.

A nice very light grey would be nice in the kitchen AND living room...