The color reflectance, its influence and issues with acuity is actually mathematical -- not subjective. Most closets have one fixture and depend on the lumens from one bulb - most often an incandescent. Can be physical considerations as well because it's not reasonable to assume everyone has the same level of color acuity. i.e One person might have no trouble picking out the navy blue trousers from among a dozen pairs of black trousers. While another may literally have to take several pairs over to a window to make the same color determination. The case for white closets and visual ergonomics reaches beyond aesthetics. Has some interesting points to explore. As another example, we've noticed here just in this thread is that closets are not repainted as often as rooms. So it's feasible that the chosen color for a closet will span a decade or more. In ten years time, the average human adult's visual acuity will decrease as the eye ages. Ten years on an eyeball after age 30 is a LONG, hard ten years. A novel color coordinated turquoise closet would be a fun pop one day and then before you know it, it annoyingly interferes with your deciphering a dark chocolate stripe from a dark forest green stripe. As with all things color, it depends on WHAT color we're talking about. Midtones aren't going to have the same visual acuity interference issues as a dark saturated color. And if there is adequate illumination for the square footage and function of the closet, then that will obviously help support the use of color in a closet as well.

tbo123 -- good point about the importance of being precise. 16 years ago we wanted white painted wood cabinets. We couldn't afford those at the time since we were on a strict budget. We chose IKEA white thermofoil cabinets instead. They served their purpose well for 15 years until we replaced them with the real white painted wood cabinets we had always wanted last year. The IKEA cabinet boxes held up so well that they could be repurposed as cabinets for a neighbor's basement when we renovated last year.

I grew up with painted cabinets. White ones, even. After a while (several years), the paint didn't looks so good. So they were repainted. Each time took a few coats of paint and the paint started building up. The inset drawers started sticking and the molding details lost their crispness. Later I bought a house that had cherry cabinets. They must be twenty years old and still look great. Moral to this story was that factory finish is much nicer- smoother and more durable- than hand applied. The pics posted of painted cabinets is typically just after painting-not 3-5 years later. One time I do advocate painting wood cabinets is if the cabinet finish has deteriorated beyond repair or yellowed and would need to be completely removed to revarnish. In that case, it's much easier to paint. The other time is if the cabinet is a really cheap grade of inferior wood. (Your cabinets look good in the pic, but I realize it could be different in person.) Whether you paint white or blue depends more on the rest of the house. I do think white has a more generic look to it than a color like butter or sage. I've seen pics of great white kitchens but they've also been expansive with lots of detail. I've also seen several pics of ho-hum white kitchens that are lacking "something". Wood graining does add a subtle texture that standard paint doesn't. Since you're going to paint the walls anyway, why don't you do that first. Then reevaluate whether to paint the cabinets white, a color, or not at all. Maybe photoshopping would help show how possible changes would look.

Marie, you can go to www.whitepages.com and do a variety of searches, including a reverse phone look up (by clicking on "Phone") for free. The phone number information in my experience includes only landlines, not mobile numbers. The information on this website is from a variety of public sources, some accurate, some not, It's not unusual for the scam or boiler room-type callers to have phony or un-useful caller IDs that display false numbers. Sometimes they change the number shown so that callers see an incoming call that appears to originate from their own home area code. IE, so it appears to be a local call.