To bring out or not brick detail surrounding kitchen hole?

Question

You can peek into my kitchen from my living room via a kitchen hole which is framed by bricks. the bricks frame the whole kitchen hole and can be either painted the same as the wall colour so it blends into oblivion, or painted red to actually bring out their "brick-ness".

which is better? bearing in mind that this wall with the kitchen hole is the first ppl see as they enter the house, and also we'd like to paint another wall a stronger colour (aka feature wall) what colour would match the red bricks?

Answer 1

How big is the hole?  Is the ledge large enough to put a large piece of art/sculpture on it?  Can you add glass shelves to it? Brick color kind of makes it pretty casual.  If you don't want casual - color it the wall color to minimize it as you mentioned.

I think - if it is small, I'd probably close it in unless I wanted to put a pretty glass murano vase there. Is it only there so the worker bee in the kitchen can keep in touch with those in the next room?  You may want to tear that whole wall out if it's not load bearing.  Put in an island.