See what homeowners have done to spruce up their cabinets.
Photo: British Standard
Most two-toned schemes make the lower cabinets a dark color and the upper cabinets a light color. British Standard's design includes the walls—and the bottom six inches of wall cabinets—in a darker, lower color.
They call it the "tide line." It's a fun do-it-yourself touch you can consider if you are painting your cabinets and want to elevate your kitchen beyond the ordinary.
Photo: Tobi Fairley
Designer Tobi Fairley places elegant brass fixtures against cream-colored kitchen cabinets for a gentle contrast.
Instead of 1980s-era mirror-finish brass, satin-sheen brass fixtures have a warm, classic look.
Photo: Mountain Modern Life
Katie and Eric from the lifestyle blog Mountain Modern Life discovered these charming reclaimed wood barn doors when wandering around the country back roads in their RV.
Even though these cabinet doors look like reclaimed wood or recycled barn wood, they're not.
They are 100% new, DIY-made cabinet doors.
Dumpster diving did produce the base cabinet boxes, but everything else is a clever replica of weathered barn wood.
Photo: Cherished Bliss
Shaker-style cabinets have a raised picture-frame perimeter around the door and drawer fronts.
Ashley, at the design blog Cherished Bliss, turned her flat (slab) cabinet doors into Shaker-style cabinets by running a thin frame around the doors.
She lightened her work by choosing 1/4-inch plywood for the frames, and the lumber yard cut the wood to 2 1/2-inch wide strips.
Photo: Ana White
If you have an under-sink kitchen cabinet mess, you might benefit from a quick, simple, and ultra-cheap DIY cabinet door organizer.
Ana White sells plans for ambitious projects, like entire kitchen cabinets you can build from scratch.
Whet your appetite for building with this simple project that you can find for free on her site.
Photo: Thrifty Decor Chick
If you want kitchen cabinet lighting, follow the lead of Thrifty Decor Chick and interior decorator Sarah, who discovered the power of LED tape lighting. Forget the bulky, heavy incandescent rope lighting of the past. Light-weight LED lights have an adhesive on the back.
Plug them in (no hard-wiring required) and connect them throughout your cabinets. You can control them with a standalone remote control or with your mobile device.
Millions of RGB (red-green-blue) color combinations are possible.
Photo: The Yellow Cape Cod
Those dead spaces at the top of your kitchen cabinets collect dust and little else.
Sarah Macklem at the design blog The Yellow Cape Cod wanted kitchen grandeur, and her short, plain builder-grade wall cabinets were not cutting it.
She added crown molding across the top of the cabinets, which visually elevated them and made them look taller and custom-made.
The trick: Do not install the molding directly on the cabinets. Instead, create a framework from 1-inch by 1-inch boards, attach the molding to the frame, then attach the frame to the top of the cabinets.
Photo: Two Men and a Little Farm
Mount a powerful magnetic knife strip under kitchen cabinets, then attach the glass storage jars with metal lids to the strip.
This concept is cooler, safer, and more flexible than the traditional method of screwing the lids to the underside of the wall cabinets.
For added safety, store only light-weight kitchen goods such as dried fruit, candies, chocolates, marshmallows, nuts, and coffee.
Photo: Brandi Sawyer
It may look like vertically grooved beadboard, but it's smooth when you touch it.
This "beadboard" fools the eye. It is made from wallpaper and trim board. Brandi Sawyer ingeniously applied beadboard-looking wallpaper to her kitchen cabinet doors.
To cover up the edges of the wallpaper, she constructed frames from trim boards and glued the frames to the doors.