How to Choose the Right Sheen Level for Your Kitchen Paint

I’m obsessed with sheen. There, I’ve said it.

Sheen is important when you choose a finish for your kitchen. The common sheen levels are 10, 30 and 80. 10 is an eggshell finish. 30 is satin. And 80 is gloss. They can all look fabulous, but you need to be careful with your choice.

Level 80 is terrifically easy to keep clean but is a difficult one to get right in terms of colour. Basically, if you go with too dark a colour, they’ll reflect like a madman and you could end up with a kitchen full of mirrors. If you go with too light a colour, you might need to wear sunglasses on a bright day just to put the kettle on. I would rarely recommend 80.

Level 10 is at the other end of the spectrum. It is a duller finish that looks magnificent. There is something velvety about it that makes your eyes feel like they’re on a spa day. But… I would say that it maybe doesn’t suit very busy kitchens. An eggshell finish requires a bit more work to clean. So if you have young children, you have to put them in straitjackets before you let them in.

Level 30 sits nicely between the two. It has a lot of the gorgeous texture of eggshell along with a good bit of the cleaning ease of gloss. This is the finish I most often recommend. A good blend of beauty and practicality.

I wish I’d remembered that when I painted my own kitchen...

The Painting of the Reeve Kitchen

For many years, my kitchen desperately needed the attention of a kitchen painter. My wife would regularly tell me so. But I never seemed to be able to find the time.

Eventually, my wife gave me an ultimatum. Either I paint the kitchen or she’d find someone else to do it. I replied, I’d rather napalm it than let anyone else near it. She said, fine—it’ll look better regardless. So I said I’d do it and it would be the best damn kitchen painting job ever! In fact, this was going to be the pinnacle of kitchen painting! If Michelangelo had been alive today, it would move him to tears—that’s how good it was going to be! It would become a shrine to kitchen painting! A holy place! People would flock to Cloyne, Co. Cork, from far and wide to gaze upon its magnificence! And to top it all off, I was going to hide the ugly grain of the wood under a finish so supremely smooth it would change the laws of physics themselves! This kitchen was going to win me a Nobel Prize!

It was at this point, I realised I had perhaps oversold what the kitchen was going to look like when I was done. But there was no going back.

I set about sanding down the kitchen cabinet doors and filling in the grain. Followed by more sanding. After prepping one door, I knew I’d made a huge mistake. The work involved in doing the same to all of the doors was going to take a long time. It took Michelangelo six years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—and he didn’t have to smooth out any grain. I was worried I was looking at the same timeframe.

But I soldiered on, determined not to lose face. After all, I didn’t want to disappoint all the pilgrims who would be arriving on our doorstep once word got out about the world’s most beautiful hand-painted kitchen.

I must admit, when it was finally done, it exceeded my expectations. However, I am still waiting for confirmation of my Nobel Prize. I hope they’ve got the right address. Also, no pilgrims have appeared. This is quite a relief, frankly. You see, I made one teeny mistake when I chose the paint finish for my kitchen. In my bid to make this the most gorgeous kitchen on Earth, I chose sheen level 10: eggshell. It’s bad enough trying to keep it clean with two young children. I can’t imagine how bad it would be with daily coach loads of pilgrims.

I bet Michelangelo never had this trouble.

The Nicholas Moody Showroom kitchen I painted was done in an eggshell (level 10) finish.

The “White Kitchen” I painted. This is sheen level 30 (satin). If this were sheen level 80, you can imagine that on bright sunny day, you’d practically need sunglasses.