Karen,
My ceilings will be 9 foot. Presently there is a 1 foot soffit that hides A/C duct work that will be removed. The house is new construction and we decided that we do not want the soffit, too 70's for us. We also want to stagger the height of our cabinets. Use glass uppers with built in lights to hi-lite those decorateve plates and glasses.

Our kitchen ceilings are 10 feet tall. Our cabinets are stacked, reach the ceiling, and are finished at the top with crown moulding. We are very happy with this: the look is dramatic, elegant, and warm (stained cherry cabinets). The look is somewhat formal, but does work well with the rest of our house. Good luck! I'll post some photos tomorrow, if I have a chance.

Mine are 10' ceilings and the cabinets go all the way to the top. I love how they turned out but they aren't very functional, that's for sure. They are for display purposes only since they are too tall to reach. I just have one lonely fish plate up there right now. I also did a thick molding on top too. I don't have a close up, but you can kind of see it here.

I have cabinets to a 10 ft ceiling. I have them stacked on the 2 side walls with glass above and solid on my fridge wall -- similar to lindybarts. My cabinets are white and simple styling -- a little in the farmhouse direction, but not farmhouse. I like the tall cabinets in white or wood.

This should all be reassuring for just running them to the ceiling, Karen. If the one picture is anything to go by, they're all gorgeous. In case you're still looking for alternatives, an acquaintance used a pattern of boxed beams, and on the perimeter the cabinets run up to and tuck nicely under these. The ceiling and all vertical surfaces are all painted one creamy white to keep it calm, and this is also gorgeous.

What about dropping the ceiling to 8' just in the kitchen? That's what we're planning in the new house. And we're also committing that horrible sin of also using soffits! It is a functional solution that will probably one day return to fashion. All that cabinetry to the ceiling is expensive for us and we don't want to be tempted to climb on stools and ladders in our old age to reach high cabinets.

I have cabinets open above in the current house and it is a cleaning nightmare! Nasty, nasty up there.

In our last home we built we did a double stack to the ceilings as well (they were 10') however, it was expensive to add all the upper cabinets and they were too high to really even use.

In our new home we are building, there are 10' ceilings as well, and we will just decorate above them. here is a picture from the model home:

{{!gwi}}

Pinktoes-soffits-mmph. My ceilings will be 9 ft. and due to an A/C duct and a lazy installer they cover the duct work. We will be deleting the soffits and reconfiguring the ducts to tuck into the ceiling, bringing us back to 9 ft. I would love 10 ft. but it didn't happen. If we could have gone 10 I would have gone to the ceiling with the cabinets and used an old style library ladder to get to the top. Obviously that is dependant on the size of the room also, I think it would have worked for us.
If pricing is a concern just get standard height cabinets, don't put in the soffit and forgo any expensive top trim. Stagger the height to break up the walls. You can always add top cabinets later down the road. Decorate the tops of the cabinets with wicker baskets, decorative plates etc.

9' ceilings and we only took pantries to 84". I wish I'd gone taller. But, it leaves room for display...

We'll be repainting (a red/brown), but here's what it looks like now:

rockpig: What does 'mmph' mean? I googled it and there were some homosexual jargon references, which I don't think you meant. And then some vague references to what I believe would be called reverse peristalsis.

Let me clarify my own contribution here a bit. Every fad and fashion will return. Find your own examples. For those of us who grew up in the 1950s, during the beatnik years, we're rather amused to hear younger adults saying the word 'cool', as if it were some new lingo. It has returned! And so I will say that I think soffits are cool! Maybe then you'll see them as an acceptable possibility.

And so, for those of us who refuse to be bound to rules, and I've always been of that bent, we are free to look beyond the fashions of this day and use anything of any era that is functional and/or aesthetically appealing to us. So, my suggestion would be to the OP that she, too, might think outside the box of current fashion. High cabinetry, staggered cabinet tops, and anything else that one simply "must do" now--it will eventually bring the exclamation "mmph".

Personally, I have worked with an architect who works in a wide variety of styles, to develop a highly functional and appealing design. It will not look like most of what I see around these days. And it will not look like the 50s, the 70s, the 90s, or 2007. All our cabinetry will be custom. That is, truly custom, as in we will develop a design with a local cabinetmaker who will then select wood and start building. So, when we designed soffits, it was intentional. We were not forced to choose soffits or work within any other limitations spacewise. We are also old enough to not want to break any bones, so climbing up is a very bad idea. Actually, it's not that great an idea for anyone. But, do your own risk-assessment.

Just trying to add to the mix of what I knew the OP would hear. I just hate for anyone to go to the trouble of designing a new kitchen, or house, and then build pretty much a version of what they can see all around. Goodness, use your creativity and do something unique and specifically tailored for you!

"reverse peristalsis" lol, pinktoes! I love that.

For what it's worth, I went with soffits on my last remodel and I like it so well I'm doing it on our new house. After cleaning my share of filthy cabinet tops when tenants moved out and seeing all the grease and dust and crud up there, just thinking about it activates a little reverse peristalsis. I also love the display area of the soffit face for displaying pretty plates, childrens art, etc.
And I do feel it lends a certain cozyness that you don't feel with cavernous ceilings and mile-high cabinetry. I like the staggered heights look too though, and I love lindybarts display cabinets. But when I add in the $$$ factor...

Thank you all - some great ideas, and I have to say, while soffits may not be entirely en vogue in some places, they are being used hot-n-heavy here (though we call them coffered ceilings - I think they are the same?) in northern CA. In fact, it's unusual to see a new or remodeled house without some coffered ceilings in the kitchen/living room, etc.

Lindybarts, your photo is particularly helpful, thank you! I like the scale of you upper cabs - I think I've seen too many 10' kitchens where the upper cabs seemed too small, and the glass cabs too large - seemed out of whack.

Does anyone have anything useful in those top 2'? If we stick w/a 10' kitchen, I'd rather enclose them rather than build my own dust gathering system up there.

K

I have vaulted ceilings so somewhat of the same issue - no way my cabinets were going to the ceiling - I stopped with 42" uppers. I have above cabinet lighting which I love. I had stuff above my old cabinets but left these clutter free.

Everybody ha a different opinion on this

My KD insists that the best look (and this guy is from a super high end kitchen firm---talking $500K and up kitchens--believe it or not)---is to have space above the cabinet and ceiling--and then to light that space with indirect lighting--low voltage or even fluorescent (it supposedly looks good up there depending on wall paint color)
His opinion is that it give the room an amazingly bigger feel--more volume than one would imagine

Therefore---I'm blowing out a ceiling--raising a header---to achieve a 9'9" ceiling !!
and going with 42" wall cabs--thus a total cab height of about 8'---thus an air space above to ceiling of 1'8"

Has anyone else had this open air above cab advice?

Hmmm...interesting advice dsommerl. I gotta' say I can't imagine that a $500K kitchen needs to look any bigger - it's probably already huge, don't you think? So that sounds like kind of an odd rationale for it coming from that perspective.

I can say though based on my experience that fluorescent lighting does look good above cabinetry - that's what I have. It's like a flood of daylight - like there are windows up there. It's not dimmable though - I think most people might want that option. In my case I have no overhead cans, etc. so I wanted it more to light the room vs. ambiance - and I have lots of other mood lighting options.

Here's an idea what it looks like.
{{!gwi}}

Like pinktoes, we're intentionally adding a soffit. Our KD recommended doing it to make the electrical above the island a little easier and to add definition to our space.

However, we also will have the other two options. Most of our wall cabinets opposite the soffit will be to the ceiling. The cabinet over the refrigerator will not extend to the ceiling, nor will the cabinet over the oven; although it's flush to the wall.

You can see some of what I'm talking about in the plan. You can't see the soffit over the islan; it's hiding behind the bar valence.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Gibby
Not saying mY kitchen is a 500K job--just that my guy works around a lot of high end designers---deocrators designers etc--and that's the look they advocate--if at all possible.

IN 10 years---it'll probably be "out"--who knows. Of course---iyou can always build a soffit---but pretty tough to bump up a ceiling.

This was my solution to 9' 9" ceilings. I designed and built it to my concept of what could have been done in 1900.

sombreuil, can you tell us what kind of countertop you have? Sorry to ask an OT question. Thanks!

We have 10 ft ceilings (10 ft 3 in, actually) and we have over-cabinet lighting. They are almost always on except in the evening after we are through in the kitchen. I love the way it makes the kitchen look, day or night. People who had seen the before-kitchen often said, "Wow!, it looks so much bigger."

From the floor - 38" lower cabs, 3cm granite, 16" backsplash, scant 2" light rail, 48 inch uppers, several inches of crown molding which hides the hood exhaust ductwork and over-cab lighting and the remaining 16 inches to the ceiling.

I love coffered and coved ceilings, but I don't think they are exactly the same as soffits. I have seen down-lights in soffits that looked wonderful.

We have 12 ft in the rest of our 1890 home . We raised the kitchen back up to approx 11 ft and have room for the duct work for the fireplace and the vent hood . I love the spacious feel of the open area above the cabs. Caroline

{{gwi:612474}}

Beware,
I have Alberene soapstone, in "church hill" flavor.
Casey