I am currently trying to figure this out for my kitchen. My KD has 15" stacked cabs everywhere except over the fridge, which is 18". I'm being told by her it's fine, and by everyone else that it will look terrible. I am at the point now where I don't know what to think!

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2929967/specific-stacked-upper-cab-questions?n=39

With the taller new refrigerators today, especially counter depth ones, it would be unlikely to have the ability to stack cabs with to the same scale as the rest of your kitchen anyway. You generally have a couple inches over the fridge for air space/clearance also. If you have crown molding in the rest of your kitchen you have to allow for that too.

Melis - your discussion actually spurred my question!

With a standard consumer grade fridge, the bottom of the cabinet above it aligns at 72'' above the finished floor. That's 12'' shorter than a built in, at 84''. That changes the proportions of stacking the cabinets than when using a built in. You have 54" to work with, and there are several options, depending on the cabinet line you choose. Budget lines will have far fewer options, so that can be the most restricting factor of all. Stacking cabinets is a darn costly choice that I woud give up in a heartbeat if it meant sacrificing something more functional, like drawers.

If you want to use that 72'' as the bottom horizontal line around the room, that leaves you using 24'' cabinets as the lower size in the stack. You could then stack 24'' on top, creating a nice contemporary look based on symmetry. Looks great done as a sort of Rubik's cube arrangement with an accent color or two. The 6'' at the top could have a miniscule trim, and uplighting.

Or, you could do a 12'' high cabinet above the fridge, with 30'' wall cabinets as the bottom in the stack, and 18'' stacked over all, with 6'' of molding to the ceiling. That's the proportion that many cabinet lines have chosen for stacked. Also in that scenario, you could not stack the cabinet above the fridge, and just do a 30'' high cainet there. But, it's kinda lonely to have that be the only single tall doors. You may want other tall singe door cabinets in the design tl break it up from the stacked look. That means you need a line that offers 48'' tall cabinets as single doors, and there just aren't that many lines around that offer that. You'll probably do a corner 48'' H cabinet, and maybe one other, so that the single doors are spread around the room.

Or, you could choose 9'' of top molding, and 45'' tall single doors, and that might be OK depending on the details in the doors that you choose. 9'' is getting up there in being disproportionate to a simple door like a shaker, but a recessed panel with more detail can match the added emphasis on trim. 12'' of molding over 42'' is completely off scale unless this is a highly detailed kitchen with lots of onlays, posts, rosettes, corbels, and other layered decorative details. It just ends up looking like a soffit that needs to be ripped out if the door is simple and you try to go simple with a 12'' buildup.

Then there is always not taking the cabinets to the ceiling, which is a perfectly acceptable choice and much easier on a budget.

Sophie - can I just hire you? Lol! Seriously, you're great. :) We are probably going for a less contemporary look. We live in a 1902 house, with all original hardwoods and oak trim, so we'll probably either do a stained wood that seems in keeping with the look and feel of the house or possibly white painted with a bit of detail on the cabinets. I really like shaker, but I'm not totally set on it yet.

There are so many options! Kind of endless for choices. Originally, I was thinking 36 inch cabinets around the kitchen with 12 inch stacked uppers, then molding. But maybe just sticking with 30 inch and 12 inch overall will be easier? For the fridge and wall oven, I know maybe some people totally hate the look, but I'd be open to doing wine storage above the fridge as well, just to break up that line/wall of cabinets. So I could either line it all up with what I had in mind for the other stacked cabinets and have an 18 inch high wine cabinet with a stacked 12 inch above it, or I guess....not? I don't know!

I go back and forth on cabinets to the ceiling vs not. Right now, we have a soffit and heinous drop ceilings, so it's hard to imagine not having them go all the way up. I would LOVE the extra storage space, because we are sincerely lacking. We have quite a bit of holiday and serving items that we don't use a whole lot (two sets of china!) but we'd like to keep and are quite lovely for display. Freeing up some space in our regular cabinets and even in our buffet and china cabinet would be awesome. Personally, I think if we just did one set of wall cabinets and didn't take them all to the ceiling, we'd just do 42 inch probably.

Is 6" just not very much for molding? We don't have any right now in our kitchen at all, so I have no idea. 6" sounds like a lot to me!