Decorate with surprising and delightful colour inside your pantry

White shelves are the go-to option for cabinet shelves in the pantry. Let’s face it, they’re cost effective, clean looking, and they work with any style of home. White doesn’t clash with any colour palette.

If you’re game though, why not inject some personality into this space? Make it fun and inviting with colour.

A pop of zesty lemon yellow in this modern pantry. Mowlem & Co

A solid block of your favourite colour inside your pantry is a great way to do this. Imagine, for example, you had a simple white kitchen, you could enjoy a burst of colour everytime you open your pantry door.

Colour your shelves, walls, or both. You could use paint, coloured melamine shelves, tiles, or even wallpaper or self-adhesive vinyl.

A bulters pantry with grey painted shelf alcoves, looking very classy. Metricon

Colours have a strong influence on our moods. How do you want to feel when you look into your pantry? Happy, inspired, energised, relaxed…?

Colour can also change your perception of the size, shape and temperature of a room. You can do this with clever use of warm or cool colours and dark or light colours.

Today I’m going to explain the psychological effect of three different colours: yellow, pink and blue. And how they can suit a pantry interior.

Yellow

Sun, sand, lemons, pineapples, bananas, daffodils, sunflowers, buttercups, tuneful canaries and gold.

I love a pop of yellow in the pantry, it’s bright and invigorating.

It’s the colour of sunlight and makes you feel warm and cheerful. In colour psychology, it represents happiness and creativity.

"How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun." -Vincent Van Gogh

Colour-blocking at it’s finest. The technique here is to use opposite colours on the colour wheel for a dramatic effect. Hubert Zandberg Interiors

Yellow fish scale tiles in this fun, drinks pantry. The fold away pocket doors are great idea too. Amy Sklar Design

Paint your pantry walls cheerful yellow. The Container Store

Pink

bubble gum, fairy floss, barbie, ballet shoes, piglets, lipstick, lingerie, peonies, roses, cherry blossoms, flamingos, galahs, sunsets and pink champagne

It’s sweet, charming, delicate and dainty. It’s also a calming colour, associated with kindness and femininity.

Pastel pink represents youth and innocence, while hot pink is very sassy and seductive. Add some romance into your pantry with pink.

“Sugar and spice, and all things nice. That’s what little girls are made of” - unknown

The pink interior of this pantry really draws you in. The green paint is a perfect pairing too. Martha Stewart

Soft pastel pink complementing everything well in this adorable pantry. Does it make you feel like baking? From Great Beginnings

Paint the inside of your pantry cupboard pink, for something sweet. Cakewalk Baking

Blue

sky, ocean, jeans, overalls, blue bird, sapphire and violets

Think of the roaring ocean and the soaring sky, blue creates feelings of the same tranquility you find in nature’s true wonders.

It’s therapeutic to the mind an body because it can suggest peace, divinity, wisdom, trust, safety and stability.

Being a cool colour, it makes walls in small pantries seem further apart and gives you a sense of spaciousness. Pale blue and pastels especially create a sense of light and space.

The colour blue is said to be an appetite suppressant because it’s a rare occurrence in natural food. In the pantry, it will help control food cravings if you’re on a diet (I’m joking).

“You are my blue crayon, the one I never have enough of, the one I use to color my sky.” — A.R. Asher

Soft blue looking wonderful behind these shelves in the Mud Australia shop. Jillian Leiboff

Duck egg blue with white china looks perfect in this London home pantry. Apartment Therapy

The blue patterned wallpaper from Farrow & Ball is very striking in this stylish white pantry. Denton Developments

Would you like to see more posts about pantry design?