I like this combination a lot. You can always add a warm tone light and some accent colors to avoid it looking too minimalist. My take on the trend is that this combination is more masculine/modern. Kitchens have been moving away from the antique type feeling or overly decorated feel for a while.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love grays and an a huge fan of white kitchens. I love the crisp cleaness and brightness of a white kitchen and dream of white shaker cabinets. I am not at all a fan of cherry cabinets. I love pops of colot with gray walls, especially yellow and gray.

Me too. We had cherry cabinets with granite counters in our house 10 years ago & I feel like the look is so dated now. Our new kitchen has white cabinets, marble counters and darker wood floors and I love it. I've also stuck to a neutral scheme in the rest of the house with pops of color and I love that look too.

Me three. Cannot stand cherry cabinets. I like the look you described and always will, so it doesn't matter to me if someone decides it's "dated."

Anonymous wrote:yep! I'm in the process of planning one now. I'm so excited about it. I think there are ways to warm them up... other colors, lighting, etc... I also like a little bit of a lighter floor (like in the picture posted above) because it is warmer than the very dark wood.

Me too! I love this look. To me it isn't cold; it is light and bright and airy. A clean look.

I've heard the same thing as PP about painted cabinets not being as durable as stained finishes, and that bums me out. But I still think I'm going to do it!

The most expensive cabinets that are painted do wear around the pulls and it is apparently very hard to touch up once the finish is worn. (Because original finish is pretty much manufactured on ... it's still paint but using actual paint to touch it up in high traffic/sight areas won't look good). Thanks to Cameo Kitchens for ecplsining that to me. So that is a thing to consider in buying painted cabinets. Natural wood finish may wear but won't have a different color at the spot because the wood tone will blend in. And never ever scrub painted cabinets at the handle pulls. That just makes them look ugly faster.

Ok I have a question: how durable are these white cabinets? My parents have a white island in their kitchen, and I've noticed that around the knob of the most-used cabinet the paint is wearing off and it is looking "antique" so to speak. And I don't think that these are low-quality cabinets, either, they're pretty nice.

Are maple cabinets dated? I am buying a house with honey-colored maple cabinets and I think they are so warm and nice!

PP about floor heating is just wrong in saying it isn't energy efficient. It is more efficient than baseboard heating and forced air heating. See http://energy.gov/energy saver/articles/radiant-heating Better for allergies too as air isn't pushed around. We now turn our thermostats to 55 most of the time on that level if our house. The kitchen floor heat comes up and keeps us warm. We save at least $100 on heating bills in cold months. (And we don't drop a lot of things - particularly glass things - so don't have a problem with breakage, plus last time I checked things break when falling to other floors too).

White kitchens aren't trendy. Cherry cabinets are dated. Like 1990s dated.

The trend that I like nowadays is dark lower cabinets and white upper cabinets. That may look dated in a few years, but right now I think it looks really nice.

I like the first photo, but don't like the look in the second.

The first kitchen is pretty classic, and if you want to change the "mood" all you need is a can of paint. Floors are warm wood, and everything else doesn't really have a strong time-stamp on it (white cabinets, marble, dark not heavily patterned surfaces) I have a very similar kitchen, and right now I painted it chocolate brown instead of gray. (in part because the previous owner did do a very strong brown speckled granite, so the gunship grey look didn't work for me). But I put in a white subway tile backsplash, to make it as neutral as possible. If the trend changes and I want to change the look, all I need to do is put in a totally different color palate (pastel, bold red, whatever) and the kitchen will look totally different. You can also change the handles and pulls for a different look.

For the second, the lines are very modern and hard, the floors and cabinets make the kitchen look bottom heavy. To me those floors already look outdated (or something's off about them). That sleek line is a love-or-hate thing, and you can't really adjust that look by putting in new pulls. Backsplash is neutral enough.

But if OP is talking about those super sleek modern grey and shiny kitchens, yes, not my cup of tea at all.

OP, do you also like darker brown cabinets or only cherry? While I love white kitchens (and have one myself) I do think walnut cabs can look nice in the right kitchen (e.g. one with lots of light). To me this finish is less dated than the lighter wood.

Anonymous wrote:Slate floors in gray but warm because they are from the earth. With heating pad underneath so actually warm too. Impervious, not slippery, not damaged by anything including water or grease.

Eww, NO WAY. So anything and everything you drop shatters into a million pieces?

Cork all the way, baby. Plus you don't need to waste a metric shit ton of electricity heating it up all winter since it's essentially a wood floor. Because it's really great for the planet to waste even more energy in our houses than we already do

Anonymous wrote:I have gone for a lot of beige/cream neutrals - either linen white or more of an oatmeal color. We have a lot of oriental rugs with deep blues and reds so gray would not work even if I wanted it to.

Okay, I missed the kitchen focus. My kitchen is actually not too far from what you describe - white cabinets, black granite and gray marble counters, wood floors (but oaky, not dark stained). The walls in the kitchen part itself are mostly white tile. The rest of the room is linen white so we opted not to do gray. It looks a lot like the picture someone posted (right down to the cabinet hardware), but without the gray paint.

I guess people have to go in different directions, after the brown, brown, brown look of the aughts, maybe designers are looking for something new.

Anonymous wrote:I love grays and an a huge fan of white kitchens. I love the crisp cleaness and brightness of a white kitchen and dream of white shaker cabinets. I am not at all a fan of cherry cabinets. I love pops of colot with gray walls, especially yellow and gray.

Me too. We had cherry cabinets with granite counters in our house 10 years ago & I feel like the look is so dated now. Our new kitchen has white cabinets, marble counters and darker wood floors and I love it. I've also stuck to a neutral scheme in the rest of the house with pops of color and I love that look too.

I have white cabinets now and plan to have white again when I redo the kitchen - cabinets now are 80s Thermofoil and horrible. There are a lot of ways to do white cabinets that don't look cold.