I have open shelves for my everyday china, and love them. Have never had a problem with dust/grease. But my shelves are above the sink area. I’m wondering if the difference of opinion is between people who have them near their range and those that don’t.

I love the look of open kitchen shelving. My friend has this and has only decorative items there. She cooks a lot, so I'm guessing it will get greasy, but it does look really pretty.

HGTV trend. People who want trendy put this in and while it works for a handful of people (like the small minority in this thread), it doesn't work for the majority. It's a seller's problem. If you like it, you like it, but when going to sell your house, you'll remove more than half of interested buyers who won't want to deal with this. My mother is a listing real estate agent and she says that they lose many buyers for open shelving or have to take price discounts for people who are factoring in the cost of taking them out and paying for real cabinets, which can be expensive.

Do it if you like it, but don't do it if you plan to sell in less than 5 years.

I've seen it in a lot of airBnB's that we've rented and I can put up with it for a few days, but I would hate to live with this routinely.

As with most things it works in some situations and doesn’t in others. The problem with trends is that everyone tries to adopt them but then they get implemented poorly.

Where it works well, IMO, is next to a window or in those corner spaces where have one big box cabinet jutting out looks off. Using open shelving here gives you some storage but more importantly maximizes light, balance and openness. They also work well if you have a low or sloping ceiling. Best case is having a nice sized walk in pantry, good sized island with lots of drawer or lower cabinet storage, and one other wall with upper and lower cabinets.

Worse if there’s a bacon addict in the house. Or an inveterate meat braiser.
Or even a stir-fry fiend.

100% AGREE OP. It's terrible and it's VERY CHEAP (shelves cost much less than cabinets) and it shows.

I moved into a house with mostly glass panel upper cabinets. I never would have picked this but antiquated or not, it looks great. There is the protection of the door but the visual of everything in it's place. Some of our dishes and bowls are colorful, so it all adds to the kitchen. There are also plate rails at the the back of most shelves. There's something about glass panel doors that encourages people to shut them immediately. In our previous kitchen, they would often get left open. I think it was laziness, but maybe a small element of remembering where items are. Probably fear of walking into a pane of glass, is what causes them to be closed. Anyway, I'd pick this over open shelving any day, and I'd consider glass doors in any future kitchen. Open shelves were a new, fresh look but we have to be at the ten year mark at this point, so the backlash begins.

I took the doors off the kitchen cabinet where our dishes are—I’ve got fiestaware dishes and we use everything on the shelves regularly so nothing collects dust. Our cabinets are the 1980s melamine with the oak strips on the doors so it’s an improvements believe me.

Our glass and mug collection is a total mess so those doors stay on.

I swear the trend had to have been started by single, urban design professionals-with no children-who lived in tiny spaces. Maybe the cost saving aspect of not having real cabinets, plus the shelves photograph so well when they are perfectly "curated", fed the fire. It's an idiotic concept for a normal family, unless you are running 24/7 restaurant type kitchen.

Agree. There is nothing grosser than that film of dust and grease that gets on any dishware that isn't used frequently.

ITA and I have cabinets! The stuff in them that I don’t use frequently I still have to run through the dishwasher every couple months - when they’re in the cabinets! Can’t imagine how bad it would be with open shelving. Maybe it’s OK if you don’t cook ever?

I think they only look good when you have such a large kitchen that you have space to store all the ugly stuff and have a few open shelves that you can curate for look. I do like the look of a wall of backsplash - so pretty. We don’t have them because we don’t have the luxury of space to give up functional cupboard space

We have all white dishes and glass. Everything looks great and gets used regularly so it doesn’t get greasy. Plus we use a spatter guard when cooking oil food and run the exhaust.

Anonymous wrote:I am intriqued by this thread.
We just moved into our new house and the previous owners have a space at the end of the counter ( from a house with a similar floor plan, it looks like they opted not to do a kitchen desk so it's just open space between the counter and the pantry door). They installed floating shelves (in white the same color as the cabinets.

We are wondering how we could use these shelves and what do put on the floor underneath. We eventually may redo the cabinets, but they are functional so not a priority in the next few years. It just looks awkward right now. It was staged with a plant on one shelf and a water dispenser underneath.

Remove the shelves, hang a large scale painting there and beneath put a table/desk/piece of furniture. Or, if it works out (I can’t quite picture the dimensions of the space) a small place to sit. My grandparents lived in a 1860s farmhouse and since it didn’t have a basement, the television was in the kitchen, as was a little mid century loveseat. I wouldn’t mind a comfortable place to sit when I’m waiting for something to finish a stage of cooking.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am intriqued by this thread.
We just moved into our new house and the previous owners have a space at the end of the counter ( from a house with a similar floor plan, it looks like they opted not to do a kitchen desk so it's just open space between the counter and the pantry door). They installed floating shelves (in white the same color as the cabinets.

We are wondering how we could use these shelves and what do put on the floor underneath. We eventually may redo the cabinets, but they are functional so not a priority in the next few years. It just looks awkward right now. It was staged with a plant on one shelf and a water dispenser underneath.

You should frame out a pantry in that space. We added a dish pantry in a space similar. Love it. Plenty of storage. We have everything in one place.

We have a "kitchen desk" area - something I've never liked/understood - and we are in the process of converting it to pantry space for small appliances. We're in a 1970s home - kitchen is not tiny but also smaller than we'd like - and storage space is a premium. My husband is the cook of the house and he loves kitchen gadgets (and people love buying them for him), so converting that wasted space to pantry storage will make a big difference.

Thanks fir suggestion. I’m the op of this question. The house is 1997 and has a walk in pantry, so already a lot of space. And we didn’t want to make structural changes. I do see why they didn’t do a desk, although it was common when the house was built. The space is just so bare. My mom recommended a bakers rack, but she likes visual clutter and is 75.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am intriqued by this thread.
We just moved into our new house and the previous owners have a space at the end of the counter ( from a house with a similar floor plan, it looks like they opted not to do a kitchen desk so it's just open space between the counter and the pantry door). They installed floating shelves (in white the same color as the cabinets.

We are wondering how we could use these shelves and what do put on the floor underneath. We eventually may redo the cabinets, but they are functional so not a priority in the next few years. It just looks awkward right now. It was staged with a plant on one shelf and a water dispenser underneath.

You should frame out a pantry in that space. We added a dish pantry in a space similar. Love it. Plenty of storage. We have everything in one place.

We have a "kitchen desk" area - something I've never liked/understood - and we are in the process of converting it to pantry space for small appliances. We're in a 1970s home - kitchen is not tiny but also smaller than we'd like - and storage space is a premium. My husband is the cook of the house and he loves kitchen gadgets (and people love buying them for him), so converting that wasted space to pantry storage will make a big difference.