Our cabinet maker said absolutely not on crown molding. He definitely is going to do the flat piece as you described it. I think he called it head mold (maybe?). The angle style I think is considered more Colonial and while you see it in a lot of houses, it doesn't technically go with the shaker style.

But, it's your house. If you like the angled crown molding, by all means go with it.

I have angled crown on my cabinets and it looks great. I have seen different mouldings and they look fine also.

My kitchen is finished except for the plumbing.
I have shaker style cabinets with the simple ogee crown molding. It looks terrific.

I used the flat thing with a straight angled piece on top--much Shaker furniture has a simple crown if you really want to be Shaker-ish. Go with what you like. Ceiling height will help decide what's appropriate.

My 1929 cabinets have a very simple crown molding at the top. I was having trouble visualizing this "other" type of molding, so I pulled out my trusty copy of Bungalow Kitchens. Most of the original and reproduction kitchens in that book have some type of crown molding. But a few of the (original) kitchens do have the simple flat piece of wood that you describe. Now that I see it, I really like it! It has an understated elegance. Can you go to the library and look at the book? Page 43 has an example.

It is a style preference though. In my current kitchen the crown molding looks best b/c it matches the trim design of the doors throughout the house. But in my prior house (100 yers old) the doors had a very plain, chunky wood trim. In that house, the plain style of molding would have looked better.

What year is your house? Do you have crown molding in any other rooms? What is the trim like around your doors?

Francy

my house is 1890. I have orginal crown molding in all the rooms. My designer matched my new shaker cabinet molding with the molding from the built in china cabinet.

my cabinets are ceiling height. It all looks great

I think it all depends on whether you're going for a shaker look, or if you picked a shaker door because you liked the plainer style.

Our doors aren't strictly shaker, but they are rather plain. We interpreted this as all the more reason to put a showy crown on them:

I do like kitchenkelly's..we didn't know what to do...then I saw a photo of cove molding on simple cabinets and loved it..so we did the same...here it is...

Mine is simple, straight - which is what I wanted with this style of cabinetry. It's not really crown molding though since it's not at the ceiling - vaulted ceilings. Here's what it looks like.

{{!gwi}}

Alku
Sorry to get off topic but what is your hardwood. It is just gorgeous - is it Brazilian Walnut?

Kitchenkelley, that is beautiful! I've long loved gibby's and hers and Kitchenkelley's are in keeping with the simplicity of the shaker style and the basic geometry and linearity of that style. Crown molding always tends to look too top-heavy to me, particularly over simple slab or shaker styles. Me, I'm not so keen on molding anywhere and since I was looking for a more contemporary look myself, I went top molding-less

Kmoth, that question makes me smile! It's actually not hardwood at all, but cheapo laminate that's supposed to look like Brazillian Cherry. Our flooring choice was a slave to our budget, but we plan to switch it out for the real McCoy in ~10 years, after we get through the young kids phase. Luckily it looks nice; we had a friend over for dinner and she asked if our hardwoods were original to the house. Imagine her suprise when we explained it was plasty-wood (which is what we fondly call our laminate).

CADreamer, Moving-in in two days!! Hurray! I don't know how I missed that the first time I saw this post. I am still amazed at how quickly your kitchen came together. Can't wait to see pictures!

we have shaker style cabinets - we did a cove molding (instead of crown molding). here are pics:

I am just in the process of changing my kitchen cabinets, to a shaker style. Is crown moulding on the top of the cabinets and light valance, is still in style?