High gloss to me looks really shiny no matter what kind of lighting you have. What about semi-gloss? Low lustre is very low shine and high gloss is very high shine. Semi-gloss is kind of in the middle.

We are in DC also. We've done two kitchens in ikea and have been happy, though we have only been in said kitchens for 2 years (my husband was transferred out of state so we left the first house earlier than we expected). So I can't speak to long term quality, though there were no red flags of any issues. On your contractor's concerns, my first contractor was very familiar with ikea cabs (having done his own kitchen with them) and he was great with double and tripling up on securing it - like extra fastening to the wall, and extra nails holding on the back of the cabinets. But I kind of feel like once you put a solid countertop on, the whole thing just becomes an indestructible mass in any event? In any event, we browsed a bit at comparable white gloss places. Our kitchen is large enough that it was $8000 for ikea cabinets, so would have been like $75k for poggenpohl - which we were not interested in. We looked at friends' kitchens and went to several showrooms - places that would have cost up to, say, $35k. And were not convinced there was any quality difference at that price point. Sure, could we have gotten better quality cabinets? Yes. But only at an outrageous price point. In the case of my friends who have slightly more expensive cabinets from, say, home depot, they might have plywood boxes, but the plastic-y paint is peeling off certain places in their cabinets a year later. One place you could check if you're nervous about ikea is porcelanosa. They still have a location in Rockville I think. But we thought the quality looked on par with ikea and they wanted 6x the cost. Plus they have to design the kitchen for you (versus ikea where it's your design -a pro for me).

Thanks for this suggestion, Jamie. Checked the site. Shipping is not free to Canada. But perhaps still a good deal, all things considered. I will check them out further. Can't wait to take possession of the condo.... might be a few weeks yet before I can start reno. I will post pics. :-)

Renovation of our kitchen going on ... Opted with acrylic high gloss cabinets and plywood boxes, Quartz countertops... I was advised to use acrylic flat doors on top cabinets and pvc on down cabinets as pvc can take better abuse ... google about it... and also don’t use wet cloths when wiping down the acrylic flat doors apparently not good for them.. according to google...