What’s your budget? I’d advise against dark cabinets in a small space, especially one without a lot of natural light. You could paint the cabinets a creamy color (not white) or keep them the same. I can’t tell if your backsplash is pure white - you just want to make sure the color is completely. New floor tile would probably a good investment too.

You've shown us three photos of the same basic wall. we need more input than that. I to think a dark color will close off that area. Do you have LED lighting under the upper cabinets? Are the can lights 4000K LEDs? That might be a place to start before you pick your colors.

Congrats on your rowhome. It looks like a pretty spacious kitchen for a galley. Your second picture is a kitchen by Heidi Callier and I too used it as inspiration for a recent kitchen rennovation.

Have you priced out the cost of painting your cabinets? Will you do it yourself or have someone else do it? It is not a simple thing to do well. And, will you be leaving the current floor? I am assuming so since you said you are on a buget.

I personally would search for some Plain English, DeVol, Heidi Callier, or Whittney Parkinson type pics that involve cabinets and flooring similar to your colors and see if you can make a great change just paint colors and hardware.

I would also skip a backsplash entirely and use glossy paint in the same color as the wall color. I did this in my last rowhouse kitchen and it was great. Easier to clean than tile and it doesn't visually chop up the room as much as a tile backsplash. Easy on the wallet too.

I think Hauge Blue - while I adore it - is going to be too dark. I would go with Farrow and Ball French Grey though from the Heidi Callier pic for the walls and cabinets, and I think it would look good with your floors. Here is another pic of it. I do think it is going to read too dark in your space though.

REMEMBER: When you look at inspiration pics, try to find pics of the entire kitchen so you can get an idea of how many windows, glass doors, and volume of space is in the kitchen. Small close ups of cool cabinet colors are enticing out of context, but you need to consider your light situation and size space.

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I paid a ridiculously expensive NYC color consultant who was twisting my arm to use French Grey for my new galley kitchen. The kitchen has low natural light - not as low as north facing, but it is certainly not light flooded. In the end, I decided instead to use Farrow and Ball White Tie for the walls and cabinets. It is gorgeous and I'm glad I listended to myself instead!

I know sometimes things look better in photos than in real life, but I like your cabinets and hardware as they are. It might just be me, but I am starting to find wood appealing again.

I am not as much a fan of your flooring, and I would be concerned that it might "pop" against a dark blue paint.

Not a designer, but a note from everyday life: Having lived for several years in a rowhouse (Baltimore), be careful of going dark: rowhouses tend to be dark, so unless you have great lighting, you need to be aware of the long, unusual space and the shadow factor. I love dark, moody rooms, but it might be safer to go white if you change the cabinet color. If you get into green/blue you're going to be changing the floor too, probably.

I think your current cabinets are cheery and look good ... what about redoing just the backsplash and putting in better lighting? Does the space work well for you? It might not need much.

wheres any seating? seems at least this could be achieved. question arises of stove near landing /passage to stairs with no buffer. safety /generally not the best..... I might want to jiggle things around a bit but the pics do not reveal the space. the opposite section could at least provide seating. No I wouldnt paint the cabinets right now.

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Save the money if its tight. More to do later on.

I’d definitely keep the cabinets light.
I think it’ll work better with the flooring and dark would be...dark.

Is the floor terra cotta tile?

New hardware sounds great !

Before committing to the F&B brand please read reviews.

If your cabinets are in good shape, I'd be tempted to keep them as is - unless you get a fantastic & experienced painter (which is not cheap), DIY painting jobs tend to be less durable than factory finishes. You could make a big difference with a floor that is not orange and light colored counters and backsplash. I know you said that you can't change the layout at this point but the range looks like a really tricky and possibly hazardous spot. We have a small galley kitchen and I was surprised that moving the appliances weren't as cost-prohibitive as I anticipated (and we're on a slab so it did involve some work.)

The cabinets look great as is. The arabesque tile is obviously what is most wrong if you are looking for least expensive improvement. Lose the backsplash tile and paint the splash area.

Spend a bit more and repaint. The taupe-ish wall paint color isn't doing the cabinets any favors.

More $$, then replace the flooring.

Also from Baltimore. I would do F&B Hazy, Lulworth Blue or Skylight -- until seeing the floor. Archive should go well or Salt for a little more contrast.

Be aware that painting cabinets is non-trivial, as in thousands of dollar bills. If you think to avoid that by doing it yourself, it can't eat literally hundreds of hours of your time and make individual sections of your kitchen unable to be used for long periods. The kind of paint is "special" too (more acrylic and less latexie) and will run somewhere between $80 and $125 a gallon.

I would raise the tall uppers to be above level with the bottom of the hood. It will let more light travel into the rest of the kitchen. If you don't have wiring for undercabinet lights, look at led tape - installing the transformer inside of an upper.

If replacing the counters, I might move that little cabinet forward and install a full depth counter. It will make the opening the window a little annoying, so it will depend on how often you do that.

I REALLY understand the need to make the kitchen different. But if you're doing the counter, backsplash, painting cabinets, new floor and new hardware, it isn't that much more to just go ahead and replace the cabinets. So my advice is to wait, to plan and save and just do what you want all at once. Move the dishwasher to the other side of the sink, move the sink a little to create more workspace between the sink and range and to be able to replace the 24" DW with a 36" drawer unit.

Thanks everyone! I’m attaching more photos to provide a better sense of the space. You’ll notice that the kitchen is in the ”middle” of the rowhome, with the back doorway opening to the now-enclosed former sleeping porch. The previous owners added cabinets in there and the light is obviously better.

Please ignore the mess and dead plant (though my dog clearly wants to say hi.) As for budget, it depends. We both work from home so we want to avoid a proper renovation for now. I’m open to new floors (refinishing the hardwood below or replacing it with new hardwood if its damaged), paint, backsplash, countertops…so potentially up to $10k? I hear you all on concern wrt painting the cabs. Fwiw we do have a contractor lined up for painting; he provided a great quote and has very good references and photos of previous work. I do think painting cabs would make a big difference in how the space feels.

I hate the floors so maybe that should be step 1. What kind of countertops would you go with? I was thinking a nice light slab (e.g., carerra marble, white quartzire) on the sink half and butchers block on the prep area across from that.

This last photo shows the perspective from the living room couch. I think we need to change the grey.

if you start ripping at the floors you are into a major remodel.

I would cut down the pony wall to counter height, possibly put a butcher block top, as a slight over hang and some stools. Clean and reseal the floors

Will be way too dark, in my opinion. As well, dark colors show every speck of dust. Your cabinets are lovely and wood is "in"... in case you care about trends. Flooring, white counters, nicer lighting would be nice. I would personally want to see the cabinets your painter has painted in person. Photos can be extremely deceiving and a paint job that looks great in a photo can look terrible in person. Good luck! You have a nice kitchen :)

Thanks so much! I think your lighting suggestion is spot-on. Any ideas for light fixtures?

Your kitchen doesn't need new lighting unless you make the peninsula a functional island. perhaps then you could add a light, but you also have to make sure you can actually install more lights.

FWIW, your recessed lighting looks nice to me and I would worry that fixtures will crowd the space. My question would be, do the current lights work for you, or do you find it dark, (it looks good in the pic but you can actually see it in person), and would under cabinet lights improve your workspace?

perhaps retro fit them with a more white LED

What about something like this in the four recessed light spots?

https://www.schoolhouse.com/products/cylinder?variant=39544444026924

@chiflipper my son lives in Dublin, right around the corner from a Farrow and Ball store. Their (very experienced) painter refuses to use Farrow and Ball.

That said, we used it in a small hallway bath (walls only) and have not had any problems.

I used F&B bancha in the living room and love it.

Will the contractor be removing them all and painting off site and leaving them somewhere to cure or doing paiting them in place in your kitchen? What kind of FB paint will be used? (Modern or estate eggshell?)

We just had new cabinets painted with FB estate eggshell. They sat to cure for 6 weeks and still the paint was soft enough that lines were made in the cabinet from moving. I've used FB throughout my home on the walls and love it. I've had painted cabinets with Benjamin Moore and loved them. I do not at all like the FB product on my kitchen cabinets. My incredibly experienced cabinet maker said it is the hardest paint to use on cabinets. (The process of painting cabinets is very different than painting walls. It needs to ideally be sprayed in a booth and cured.)

If you feel comfortable, how much did they quote on painting the cabinets? Your $10k budget seems very small for getting cabinets and walls painted, new marble counters, electric work done for lighting, and potentially new flooring. Do you live in a small town? Myabe prices are better where you live.

When we lived in our rowhouse, I hated the cabinets we had. (They were very much like yours but cherry colored.) I longed for a Plain English look. We couldn't make it happen all at once. Instead I did the kitchen in two phases: Removed base cabinets, removed terra cotta flooring and replaced with wood, reinstalled base cabinets that I so disliked. Got new inexpensive but nice hardware for the cabinets, painted the walls, put up some artwork that I loved, and put a new countertop on the old cabinets. Then three years later, we got new very high quality cabinets made. They were painted, look like Plain English, great hardware.

Because we lived in a rowhouse, I knew that I could not change the cabinet layout that drastically and felt comfortable getting a new countertop and then new cabinets a few years later that would be the same layout as the older ones.

Lastly, if you are painting your kitchen a dark color, I would invest in some very bright lighting. I would not do recessed lighting but a row of fixtures instead, and use very bright LED lights. Also add undercabinet lighting too.

For paint colors, you need to think about how the paint will look next to bancha and your dining room paint because you can see all three rooms from within the space. I think painting the kitchen and dining room the same color would be a good idea.

Beautiful dog!

Thanks, Kendrah! Very helpful re: FB cabinets. I love their colors so much -- currently debating some of their colors for my home office -- but it does seem that I should go with BM Advance for cabinets. I live in DC, so prices are very, very high here! I have a wonderful handyman/GC who would take off the doors/drawers and paint everything in our basement for <$3k. I don't think electrical work would be too much; I see there are ways to convert our existing four recessed lights into small flush mounts, so that's what I'd like to do.

Our layout definitely is not ideal but anything different would require a much more substantial renovation. That would be in the cards in ~3ish years but not now. I like your suggestion of staggering the work but it seems like you had a layout that worked for you. My current thinking is (i) removing the base cabinets and tearing up our floor tiles and either refinishing the hardwood underneath (if possible) or installing new hardwood that's as similar as possible to the existing rooms; (ii) changing recessed lights to something like this (https://www.schoolhouse.com/collections/all-lighting/products/cylinder?variant=39544444026924); (iii) new hardware; (iv) leaving cabinets for now but painting dingey walls around them; (v) maybe new countertops if we can get a good deal on a nice stone since we need relatively small slabs.

I can't imagine that painting your cabinets for $3000 will be at all satisfactory. That is an incredibly low price, especially given that you're in DC!

(Philadelphia rowhome inhabitant, here.)

I get it, it's low. I've seen his work in person and in photos (he has done cabinets for a number of neighbors on my block), and it's very good.

Changing your floor would be my priority, personally. And this is coming from somebody with an orange-ish-not-really-terra-cotta floor that I decided to keep. (You can check out my kitchen ideabook if you want to skim through for the orange-tile photos that I've saved for my own reference - but they all seem to be in larger spaces.) Next I'd do backsplash/maybe counter, depending on how much you want to spend and when. There are so many beautiful kitchens with wood cabinets similar to yours - I think they could be really great!

Thanks, jaja! That makes me feel better . New floors and backsplash seem like the way to go — curious if you have suggestions on backsplash? I love zellige tiles but not sure theyd go.

Oh, I'm not sure if I can help with backsplash, but I know others here will help you with some great ideas! It's always the last thing to choose, so make sure you have your other stuff settled first. I've also got my eye on zellige tiles for my kitchen, but I can't decide yet! If I were you I'd be going through tons of wood galley kitchen photos and see which ones make you smile, then go from there.

I would remove the pony wall and change that cabinet to a bar with stools between living/kitchen. Floors must go! Lived in D.C. in the mid-80's. Last time I visited it was totally different; not for the better that I could see. I'm sure prices are outrageous!

Yep, $3,000 is insanely low for DC. I was going to ask of the cabinets you've seen, how long ago were they painted. Have they worn well over years? But, you did say that you were going to do a big remodel a few years down the road, so if you spent $3k to get cabinets that will look fine for a few years, I can see that being worthwhile. Everyone spends money differently.

The floors in our house were original 1870 heart pine. I ripped up the terracotta in our kitchen and had it replaced with reclaimed heart pine from a building made around 1870. I custom mixed a stain that went well with our cherry cabinets (yes the cherry cabinets that we hated and ended up getting rid of) but the stain looked great in our refinished kitchen anyway.

Folks on houzz will badger you that there is no way you are going to be able to have it look good putting new hardwood floors next to old ones. Don't listen to them. Yes, if you are going for an exact match, it won't be right on. But you just need to find something that compliments the existing floor. And, has a width and sheen that looks right for your home. You live in an old rowhome and your vibe is funkier than a suburan cookie cutter house. I think you can make it look great.

Yep BM Advanced is the way to go for cabinet paint. BM should easily be able to color match a FB color. I doesn't look quiet as luminous or deep as actual FB paint, but close enough for the kitchen. If you paint the cabinets and walls same color, I would do BM for the wall too so it looks consistent with your cabinets.

I don't know that the electric work will be complicated. It is just knowing how much an electrical contractor charges to even walk in your house and do work. It can get damn expensive.

I think your lighting choice is great. Lights can really be the jewelry of your kitchen and a real focal point in a galley. Those lights are all the rage right now so you can find them from a lot of places in different sizes and colors should you need that.

You've gotta show some before and after pics. Can't wait to see what you come up with.