The previous owners of my current home put natural maple cabinets with Uba Tuba granite. Would not necessarily have been my choice (when I did my kitchen in my previous home, I did natural cherry cabs with Shivakashi Vyara granite...a bit more character, IMHO, but the maple and Uba Tuba *does* work (that's probably why it is such a common combination)).

Here is one from the Finished Kitchens Blog that I've always liked:

Here is a link that might be useful: natural maple kitchen

No pictures; ours isn't built yet. We're using unstained maple cabinets (custom-built by local cabinet maker). White appliances. Daltiles' Matte Biscuit ceramic tiles for all backsplashes. Corian's Seashell countertops (a light, warm gray). Daltile's Morlais in "Antracite", a medium, warm gray ceramic tile for floors. The grays are bordering on taupe, they're that warm. I think that helps them look good with the maple wood, which is warm. And it's all smashing with satin nickel faucet set, which is another warm gray.

We carried samples of cabinetry wood around with us for final color selections. DH got some wood samples and finished them with the lacquer we plan to use.

The link above is a gorgeous kitchen. We love the light color schemes. And we like the calmness of a monochromatic color scheme, which is what drove our selections.

My cabinets are natural maple but with a coffee glaze and I have ubatuba granite.

I'll try and post some pics next week, but here is something you may consider. I have natural Maple cabinets (clear urethane over maple) that are really nice looking. A lot of the cabinets are exposed to a direct sunlight. Over time, the sun has "lightend" the maple on these cabinets. You don't really notice until you open the cab door and then WHAM, you notice a much darker ring that was masked by the door. Not that big a deal. But Probably means I will refinish sometime soon. This happened over about 8 years.

It's not installed yet (about another 3 weeks or so - woohoo!) but ours are natural maple w/white appliances - that wasn't necessarily my first choice (I prefer "period" style painted white or dark quarter-sawn oak) but 1. we have a tiny space and everybody talked me out of anything too dark 2. we are on the tightest budget imagineable and wound up with a set of excellent condition complete set of 2ndhand KM Mission-style cabinets that I picked up on Craigslist for $1k.

I really like natural maple, although I think it does lend itself best to a more modern look - lots of sleek ss and nickel etc which isn't necessarily the route we'll be going in our older house. However, I'm really happy with what we've got style and qualitywise. That said, I recently started considering whether maybe it's worth staining them down a couple of shades darker.... which would also help tie everything together (we had to buy 2 extra cabinets to round out the set and, while they match perfectly on the WRONG side of the old cabinets, the side exposed to sunlight has turned slightly golden - normal for lighter cabinets, I gather).

In any case, I'll post pix as soon as there's something to share!! (And, despite all my musings and ruminations, I know full well there's a very good chance that once they're in I'll love them exactly as is since they're beautiful wood in a classic design!)

This is my seven year old kitchen so appliances are dated. If I were doing the kitchen today, I would do it differently BUT see how the colors go together. Clear maple (which has darkened and yellowed over time), Uba Tuba counters, tumbled marble w/ ubab tuba accents on backsplash and porcelin tile floor.

{{!gwi}}

Here are some pics of our natural maple with ss appliances and basalt slate laminate:

Still agonizing over wall color. I want a paint that's the color of cayenne pepper or maybe ground cinnamon. I'll be checking out BM Aura tomorrow when I head into the metro area tomorrow. Part of the paint color quandary is the tiles. They are yellow-toned while the maple has red tones:

The attuached URL will take you to photos of my kitchen while it was still underway.
We used natural Maple cabinets, Bamboo flooring, Corian tops, DCS 6 burner range, Fisher Paykel Dish Drawers and an Amana french door fridge.

Some of the phots may seem kind of random, but i dont have any single photos that I can easily post here.

Cheers,

Butch

Here is a link that might be useful: Photo gallery

I have natural maple cabinets, Crema Bordeaux granite, and Brazilian cherry floor. I like the contrast of the light colored cabinets with the darker floor. Our kitchen has been completed about 4 months.

Alleycat
Love the tile work! Nice choice. Your cabinets seem to take on a red hue in the pictures. Are they a true natural maple or are they stained?

Alleycat, your cabinets do have a red undertone. this is what is confusing to me. Some look yellow while others look red. I myself prefer the red undertones. what type of countertop did you use? Soapstone. It's very beautiful and understated.

volleyhead: we specified natural maple, but the info from Forest Wellborn indicates "wheat", so they may have a coating of some sort. They have definite red tones, which messes us up on paint selection. We're thinking of painting the wall above the tiles a deep charcoal, to work with the laminate (basalt slate), and then paint the window and pantry walls a cinnamon or maybe rust color. The fourth "wall" is a huge red brick chimney piece that acts as a room divider. We were planning to downplay the red brick, but a designer friend said to work with it and choose a pumpkin, red brick or red-brown color. Heading to the BM store for Aura samples...

Apologies for OT - Abbycat, I'm sure I didn't catch you in time, but I'm absolutely in love with Buttered Hazelnut from Valspar. It may not have as much red as you want but has a good, rich rust/brown/orange color. (Valspar's at the big blue lumber store.) There's a Tomato Bisque color, too, that looks absolutely edible.

cate 1337: I picked up a few Aura samples: Masada, Buttered Yam (similar to your suggested color) and Moroccan Spice. They're gorgeous. Aura colors are just a bit brighter than similar SW or BM colors.

I'll post a pic of the Masada sample in a separate post.