I like the trim in the kitchen to match the trim in the rest of the house, and the cabinets can be different or the same. In our new/current kitchen, we are matching cabinets and trim...Both clear finished Douglas fir. But in our last house, we had hemlock trim and cherry cabinets. I think your fir trim in a natural color with the natural cherry will look gorgeous. It's a combo we seriously considered, but after having cherry previously, decided to go with the fir. The fir won't darken as much as the cherry, so I feel the cherry will always be a step or 2 darker, and provide a pleasant, 'just-enough' contrast.

I have pine trim and oak cabinets, stained the pine baseboards throughout the downstairs a Honey Maple color to get it a little orange (that dreaded word!) like the oak. But didn't go redder for the kitchen window on rhome's recommendation that all the trim should match, esp. since I have FR open to kitchen. The wood slider in the FR is natural pine, as will be the 6-panel pine doors since I don't like messing with the stain in the corners of the panels (tried it on one door upstairs). We'll see how much the clear poly yellows.

It's your choice if you're starting from scratch - I already had pine trim all the way through the house, so thought it would strange to trim out the pine window in oak just in the kitchen.

{{!gwi}}

We'll likely wind up getting new trim in the same wood as the custom cabinets, cause the quote to do so is very reasonable.
But that said, I'm not a matchy person when it comes to wood tones. I really enjoy the fact that my LR and DR has lots of wood pieces that don't match, and the exposed beams in my kitchen will still be darker than the other wood.
If you do choose to go different, I'd make the lesser amount of wood the darker tone, and the cabinets the lighter. That's just me, but that is how I'd do it.

I have older cherry cabinets and douglas fir trim and floors (most old, some new VGF). We like the combination. The fir holds its own with a lighter clear orange that harmonizes with the darker red of the cherry.

Not the best pix, but here: are cherry drawers and fridge surround against a clear vertical grain fir trim:

I actually opted not to stain trim and we painted all floor molding, door and window trims white as well as all our outlet covers will be white. We have cherry espresso cabinets with almond latte walls and similar floor and backsplash. The crown molding above cabinets I wanted to stand out with cabinets. All our doors are white so I figured best to not mix match stains and trims considering all this. So far it looks great

We have oak cabinets, dark stained trim (a few shades darker than the oak cabs) throughout the house, and painted trim around our kitchen windows. It's not ideal, but changing it out after the fact proved to be too difficult, and we decided it wasn't worth paying a lot of money to accomplish it.

Right now it's painted white. I may try a different color at some point, but this actually seems the most unobtrusive.

(The strip of plain wood at the bottom of the window was just added to create a small windowsill when we did the tile backsplash. I'm going to paint it white.)

Side Question: Anybody in MA using fir trim? We're pretty much DIY and are having difficulty figuring out where to get fir for baseboard and trim. It seems to match the old trim in our house the best (which is some sort of older pine--yellow pine maybe?)

As far as the kitchen goes: the window and door trim throughout our house is darkened wood (which I think is a naturally darkened variety of pine.) We put pine around our kitchen windows but the kitchen felt very dark to me with our mahogany cabinets and dark counters even though we have windows facing north, south (under a porch overhang) and east. We painted the trim off white and it made a huge difference in lightening up the room. The cabinets are a farily close match to the color of the trim in the rest of the house and helps tie the rooms together.

I feel it's ok to paint the window trim in "wet" rooms even when the trim in the rest of the house in unpainted.

Circuspeanut, you really make me wish we'd gone with cherry cabinets! It is certainly a gorgeous combo with the fir.

Thanks to everyone for the pics and thoughts.

I went into the shop to pick up door samples today and the building has an old fir support post that has some new fir trim adjacent to it. I found the light-stained maple sample was almost exactly the same color as the new fir, and the light-stained cherry sample was almost the same color as the old fir. The samples are a couple of years old, but they probably spent most of that time in a cabinet away from light, so they might not be as dark as exposed cabinetry would be.

Circuspeanut - do you know if your cherry is stained? It looks like it is just a shade or two darker than the fir. I'm wondering where a light-stained cherry would end up.

I spent some time in a granite/tile shop today as well, and while I think I like the cherry better than the maple on it's own, I prefer darker counters/backsplash and I like them paired with the maple more than with the cherry. So today's thinking is fir windows/trim that will ultimately go medium, maple cabinets that will be a couple shades lighter, darker counters/backsplash, and a floor that is stained close to where the fir will end up. Now I need to wait for me full-size door sample to come in. I could very well be swayed by the cherry and end up rethinking it all!

We have cherry cabinets with a natural finish and fir window trim. The house is 67 years old. The trim was originally stained and then painted for years, and we stripped the paint to expose the stained wood again.

We tore down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. The kitchen window had been painted, but the dining room window was always just stained. So, we had to decide whether to have them both painted or to strip the paint on the one in the kitchen. It was a bear of a job to get off the many layers of paint, but I'm so glad we did.

There was quite a contrast between the stained fir and the natural cherry when the cabinets were first installed. But, since the cabinets have darkened, they are now very close in color. We liked the contrast, but we also like the similar colors. In other words, I don't think you can go wrong with this combination.

I don't have a very good pic of the window trim next to the cabinets, but here's a shot that shows both colors. The window trim job is not completely finished in this pic, and the cabinets have not darkened much yet, but it should give you an idea. If I can find my camera, I'll try to get a better pic showing the cabs right next to the window trim.

we had pine trim and got burgundy stained cherry cabinets. the pine seemed really out of place. I suppose if we had white trim then it would've been a different issue. So we put new trim around the window. Rather than buy very expensive molding pieces for the job from the cabinet manufacturer, pine trim from Lowe's was stained to match the cabinets. 2 years later, i do not see any difference in shade of the stan between the cabinets and the trim.

i think as long as they are in the same family, then any potential darkening shouldn't really matter.

(Thanks, Rhome! That's so nice of you. I figure all the copper ties my warm tones together.)

Jraz: My cabinets were made in 1994 and I got them second-hand, but the remaining label said they had a "nutmeg" stain; not sure what that might mean in today's staining terminology. They are surely as dark as they'll ever get. When I stained new pieces to match (my kitchen is somewhat of a Frankenstein of cabinetry), I used a combination of pecan and cherry to get it right.

Here's a slightly better pic to see the contrast in the two woods:

Our old white painted windowsill was in rough shape. We added the granite sill and the carpenter built the cherry windowsill and trim above, since there was a small area of wall exposed.

Here is a photo of the kitchen in our previous home. The cherry was clear finished and was a few years old (maybe less) at the time of the photo. (We found that they did the majority of their darkening during the first few months) I think, in the long run, that cherry will end up darker than fir because of being, like circuspeanut said, a little redder, but looking at Holligator's fir, I could be wrong.

Thanks again for the pictures! I really feel I can't go wrong with whatever I pick in stain & wood, as long as I keep the colors in the same tone. I like all of these - regardless of whether they match or have a contrast. And it's nice to hear that lots of people have mixed species... And see that there is still some unpainted trim left in the world. =)