Pink kitchens.

Photo by Frida Eklund Edman for IKEA Livet Hemma

As much as I love pink, it’s a tough color to get right in a kitchen. You have to hit the shade exactly right, or else you wind up with something resembling a Barbie Dream House. Done right, though, and a pink kitchen can look really fresh and not cloying at all. The kitchen above (in the home of Frida Eklund Edman, as featured on IKEA’s Livet Hemma blog) is a perfect example. That super-soft, slightly peachy pink paired with worn woods, rich black, bright white, and of course a bit of greenery…heaven.

Photo from Divaani Blogit

Maire Haarla used a similar shade of pink in her kitchen, and again, the pairing with wood, black, and white and simple, flat-front cabinets keeps it from looking “country” or like a baby’s room. Pink and black really are best friends, aren’t they?

Photo from Fantastic Frank

The color here does get just a bit sweeter, but those exposed pipes and bulbs work to offset the pink so perfectly. If you click through to the full set of listing photos at Fantastic Frank, you can see how well the pink works with the rest of the apartment, too. The kitchen is open to a white living/dining room, and that swath of pink across the back wall delineates the spaces so well.

Photo from Domino

I’ve had these photos saved for years, and unfortunately I never saved the photographer’s name or what issue of Domino they were in. This is a dream kitchen for me—totally unfancy—and again it’s the exposed pipes and the rawness of the space that makes what might otherwise be a toothache of a color choice look super cool.

Photo by Julien Fernandez via Style Me Pretty

Technically not a pink kitchen, but that pink SMEG dishwasher (still not available in the US…boo) is probably going to what most people seeing the room are going to remember. It really is fantastic, isn’t it? I wouldn’t think it would look right with such an orange-y wood, but it totally works.

From Ladies Home Journal, 1949 / Scan via Mid Century Home Style

I had to include a vintage kitchen, of course! Man. Can you imagine having pink metal kitchen cabinets, pale green Formica countertops, black walls, floral wallpaper, pink curtains, and some sort of greenish Linoleum floor…all at once? Yes, yes you can. And so can I. It’s also really easy to imagine wearing a ruffled apron while making some really toxic-looking Jell-o molds in that kitchen. Awesome.