I would paint it the same color as the ceiling.

Not sure what style you are going for, but if you are doing traditional, you could add crown and wood trim to make it appear that your soffit is the crown part of your wall cabs.

I was going to say the same thing as Sarchlos -- make it into something or an architectural detail. You can add trim work or make it look like the cabinetry, or do plates or something along it ...

I don't know how feasible something like this would be but I recently saw a remodel using Ikea cabinets where they used additional small doors (I think they were the over-the-refrigerator-cabinet doors?) to cover the front of a soffit, to make it look like there were more small cabinets up there but the extra doors were just attached to the wall instead of to cabinet boxes. :-) The "double-stacked" cabinet is traditional and yet fashionable right now.

On the cheaper end of the spectrum, though, I'd rather just see it painted the wall color (it's a wall, for heaven's sake :-)) and used to display artwork, or perhaps a mural or frieze.

Thanks for the help. My upper cabinets are standard 12" deep and the sofit is 25" deep so it overhangs the upper cabinets by 13". I don't think using molding or doors would work in this situation. The "underneath" side of the sofit has all the recessed lights, around the perimeter of the kitchen, then it goes straight up to the 8' ceiling. In a sense it is both a part of the wall and the ceiling. That's why I'm not sure if I should paint it like the wall color or the ceiling color. Any other thoughts?

Paint it the wall color. That's what I did with our weird soffit. The result was creating the appearance of almost a tray ceiling:

Thanks I'll have to think about that.

Definitely go with wall color - if you paint it the ceiling color you ceilings will look 7ft high instead of 8 ft. I also like the idea of paneling it the same color as the cabinets (stained wood, right?) and adding crown molding. Tall cabinets all the way to the ceiling are in right now (I just couldn't afford them in our new house, still waiting to add crown molding).

Candace Olsen just did a whole show last night on make-over kitchens. One had sofits.

What they did was add crown molding to the ceiling and a thinner molding at the bottom of the sofit. She then had the sofit with moldings painted the same color as the cabinets so it looked like part of the cabs. See if you can find it on the HGTV site.

I saw Candance's Ten Best Kitchens last night, and like jerseygirl said, the mouldings added to the soffit looked great. She painted the soffit and trim a dark wood tone color that blended beautifully with the cabs. ;o)

jerseygirl and patty cakes; Thanks, I looked at the HGTV program online and did see the kitchen with the added moldings on the sofit. It looks nice. I'll add a link to some pictures of my sofit so you can see how it hangs out over the upper cabinet by 13". Do you think molding would still work in my situation?

Here is a link that might be useful: sofit in kitchen

Sorry, but I don't think that with the overhang it will work to try to make your soffit look like crown for your cabinets.

I just looked at your pictures. With a little creativity, you may be able to still get it to work with a little different look.

Here is what you can do.

Add crown to the ceiling. Add thinner crown from cab to sofit ceiling. Add thinner crown to the bottom edge of the sofit. You can with cover the whole sofit with wood and have it stained or have a faux painter paint the entire soffit in the same wood color as the cabinets.

Or you can have door fronts put on the the soffit also staying with the crown moldling on the ceiling and on the ceiling of the soffit from cab to soffit. Have the sofit ceiling painted the same color as cabinets.

I hope I am making sense to you and you get the general idea.

I think it will look like it is still part of the overall cabinetry.

Are you planning on keeping the lighting in the sofit?

I like the idea of replacement doors (order custom sizes from Home Depot, stain them to match yourself if you can get stain from your cabinet manufacturer). Add crown at the top and a thinner edging at the bottom, it'll look like you just have deeper cabinets with undercabinet lighting. Doors can get pricy though.

Or you could just do the molding, either paint the soffit an accent color or get a nice wallpaper (mural?) to go in between the crown and the bottom molding. Good luck!