Our Asko is fully integrated with panels. It kept the symmetry I wanted on either side of the sink. It looks great. It cleans much better than my previous Kenmore and is quiet. Those are the pros.

Onto the cons...this is is my first paneled appliance ever. I have 3 issues. One is that I can see that the panel will possibly get warped, down the road, because people tend to have wet hands when opening the dishwasher. Second, the dishwasher door sits very low when it is fully open. (I should have paid more attention to those of you with dishwasher drawers.) I find that a little ergonomically annoying. And third, the hidden controls make it impossible to know if the dishes are clean or not. That is what is really making us crazy. (Maybe there is some sort of indicator that I haven't figured out yet.)

I hope that helps some. If I had to do it over, I would look at the drawers more closely. And if I did go with the integrated, I would get the model where the controls show at the top.

Hope this helps some.

Thank you doonie. That is very valuable feedback. I was on track to get the hidden controls but now I am reconsidering.

We had hidden controls in our last kitchen, but no panel on the front. We have hidden controls in this kitchen, but with panels on the dws. Love them and wouldn't want to go back. Ours (Bosch) has a light that shows on the floor while the dw is still running, and goes off when dishes are clean.

I have a DW with the controls showing. My mom, who is in her eighties, has the DW with the controls hidden inside the door. I chose mine only because it was a lot cheaper! I know that having the controls hidden is definitely more fashionable and current. Having said that, my mom has had all kinds of trouble with the hidden controls. At her age, her coordination isn't as good as it once once, nor is her ability to "press" with one finger. The DW controls are not raised buttons, making it hard for her to discern one button from the next. She found that if she uses the eraser end of a pencil, it gives her the control and aim and pressure she needs to work her DW. When she's at my house, she always comments that she'd have preferred my DW with the controls on the front, which she can operate easily. So, the upshot is that if you have senior citizens who will be using the DW, or anyone in your family who may not have good coordination, I would get the controls on the front panel.

The exposed control panels I find a little easier to use, and they sometimes give info about where the dishwasher is in the cycle (useful if you want to know if it's almost done, or if you want to add a forgotten item early in the wash cycle). OTOH, the cabinet door panels vary in size from one manufacturer to another, and if *this* dishwasher fails you may be limited in what you can replace it with if you want to keep the cabinet panel. Sometime the exposed control panels are 6" tall (matching most U.S. cabinet drawers), others just 4" or other sizes. Miele makes some filler panels to adapt cabinet panels that are too short, but short of sawing off part of it (often not a feasible option) there's nothing that can be done if your new DW has a larger exposed control panel than your old one.

Some fully-integrated DWs do have a light or other indicator to show it's on, either pointing downward at the floor, or upward making the small gap above the DW and below the countertop glow.

Using a fully-integrated DW also means using your own cabinet pulls. You'll need a fairly large, sturdy, easy to grasp one for your dishwasher. If all your other cabinets have small round knobs, you'll either ruin the intended hiddenness with a big handle on the DW or have to grasp and pull hard on a small knob or handle (which I wouldn't recommend - it may break off over time). Integrated DWs with exposed control panels have the manufacturer's usual door latch which usually is easy to use.

Obviously there's an aesthetic difference between the two. Most (all?) of us have exposed ovens, so I don't really see the point of hiding the dishwasher unless it really blows the symmetry or something.

The low height of the open door has nothing to do with whether it's standard/integrated/semi-integrated, but rather is a result of the move to "tall tub" dishwashers with doors that open all the way down to the toekick, rather than 3/4 of the way down with a stationary access panel between the door and the toekick. The door on those old dishwashers didn't open as low as on the new ones, since the pivot point and thus the entire open door was 6 to 8 inches higher. Nowadays, only low-end dishwashers still use that design, which substantially reduces capacity. Whatever happened to top-load dishwashers? They were really easy to close, although harder to load. The drawer-type dishwashers are perhaps easiest to use, and the Fisher & Paykel drawers are shallow enough so the fully-integrated DW won't stick out in front - and unlike other brands, they have a few controls on a small plate that mounts near the top corner of the cabinet panel, available in different colors. I think GE/Monogram had a fully-integrated dishwasher that had a small panel that fit in a rectangular hole cut near the top of the full cabinet panel, not sure if they (or anyone else) still offers this.

Wow, thank you all. A lot of very helpful experience and insight. I really appreciate it.

The whole point of having a fully integrated DW with a panel is that it disappears visually. Why pay the money for an invisible DW that will be visible? Get the Euro DW for the clearance you need, but don't even bother with a panel unless you want it to be fully integrated.

Oh, yeah...I forgot about the beeper to signal the cycle finishing in addition to the light on the floor...We turned ours off, because our new oven's timer sounded exactly the same, and I was always ignoring the oven, thinking it was only the dw getting finished! (That wasn't conducive to good baking results.) I also could never understand partly paneling a dishwasher. I would want to see the whole thing or none. I'm also not as much of a fan of a full-ht panel, since it's not hiding much either...ours looks like a drawer and door. Guests never realize those are the dws. Cool, I guess, but I'm not sure I'd do it again, as I really don't care if I see the dw. As I said in my previous post, though, I'd still get integrated with hidden controls, maybe without the panels. (I miss hanging damp towels on them in the evenings, which I'd never do over the wood.)

I only need to see the controls when I start it. There is a countdown timer that we can open the door to check if we need to...But not all dishwashers have those anyway.

Our current dws have the same 6" drawer pulls that we have on our cabinet drawers (don't know why they'd break off). After 2+ yrs we have no sign of warping.

We have the Miele Optima panelled DW with the panel showing. We like the look, and the display shows the time left so you know when the dishes will be done. We wanted this arrangement as we had a KA with a stainless steel door and there was no way to keep that thing spotless so we definitely wanted it panelled but had no desire to play Hide and Seek---We played nuff of that when we were kids
and Nobody will ever accuse of of "Following the Latest Fashion Trends" We have had the DW for about 4 years now, Don't use it as much as some of you, but the wood panel still looks new, as it does on our panelled fridge (I mean it ain't bare wood) , it has some kinda finish on it!
Anway we like this arrangements for looks, and funtionality besides this way I don't havta have a big Neon sign saying "This Way To Miele" ya looks at it and it says Miele for those of you "Miele-o-phites"

Gary