Before & After: Striking Purple Cabinets (and Walls!) Add Instant Drama to a Pastel Kitchen

Oftentimes, home projects can have a domino effect — one room makeover bleeds into another until you’re transforming every space in the home. At least, that’s what happened in digital creator René Daniella’s (@ownbyfemme) Los Angeles home. 

Originally, Daniella’s kitchen cabinets were painted a “nice pastel mint color” and were offset by the crisp white walls. But after she installed a vibrant mural in her living room (which connects to the kitchen in the open-plan layout) and painted the walls in a lavender limewash, the kitchen cabinets “started to feel too much like Easter decor,” she shares.

“I decided I wanted to change the kitchen color to complement the space more and drew color inspiration from the mural I had in the living room,” Daniella explains. “It did feel very risky going with a deep plum color — would it make the space feel too small or too dark or dramatic? — but I loved the color so much that I decided to take the leap!” 

Daniella shares that when she first started designing her space, she picked “colors inspired by a garden in bloom,” with purple being her favorite. Because she has an open floor plan, all of the rooms needed to blend seamlessly together and have complementing color palettes. The newly lavender walls and colorful mural encouraged her to replace the light blue cabinet paint with the deep purple shade. (She went with Behr’s “Exotic Eggplant.”) 

And while Daniella developed the kitchen design herself, she hired professionals to execute her vision. “I hired a carpenter to build a pantry cupboard for food storage that blended in seamlessly with the original kitchen build, and a painter to do the lime wash on the walls and paint the cabinets,” she shares. “We did DIY a few flower vases, which add some pops of color to the kitchen!”

It cost her around $6,000 to transform her kitchen, and she says it was worth every penny. The experience also reminded her that designing rooms should be an adventure and reflect only your visions and ideas — not others. For Daniella, the space is truly reflective of her own colorful vision. 

“I am obsessed with the richness of all the colors and how feminine the space feels. I also love how open and inviting the space is,” Daniella says. “I enjoy hosting dinners, and the layout of my kitchen makes it very easy to prep and cook while simultaneously entertaining and engaging with my guests.” Now that’s how you do monochrome.