We have high-gloss cabinets by Bellmont (Lustre, white, acrylic). We love them -- and yes, they were chosen in part because we didn't want to spend Poggenpohl, or even Pedini, prices.

What about high gloss hpl? Should be durable and not too spendy. We are likely doing matte hpl slab frameless. But no real life experience w hpl yet.

IKEA.

IKEA is foil, no? That's what Ikea website says for Ringhult high gloss.

I am interested in high gloss HPL as Jmarino19 suggests - just need to find a manufacturer. This process is so fragmented- each showroom and designer reps just a few lines. Finding what we need is just a needle in a haystack - especially in north america where frameless is still a small minority of the market and high gloss, non foil is a smaller minority of that

I second IKEA Ringhult. Yes, it's foil but also extremely durable.

Ikea Veddinge is high gloss paint.

From German testing institute, customer satisfaction, ranking
Nolte Küchen
77,5
1
good
Alma Küchen
77,4
2
Poggenpohl Küchen
77,4
3
Schmidt Küchen
76,2
4
Bulthaup Küchen
76,1
5
Schüller Küchen
75,7
6
Alno Küchen
74,1
7
Nobilia Küchen
73,4
8
Ikea Küchen
72,3
9
Impuls Küchen
69,9
10
satisfactory
Häcker Küchen
68,3
11

Product QualityPoggenpohl Küchen
86,6
1
very good
Alma Küchen
84,4
2
Nolte Küchen
84,0
3
Alno Küchen
82,0
4
Bulthaup Küchen
80,6
5
Nobilia Küchen
78,1
6
good
Schüller Küchen
76,9
7
Schmidt Küchen
76,5
8
Ikea Küchen
74,3
9
Häcker Küchen
70,4
10
Impuls Küchen
60,1
11

The lower cost kitchens are:

Alno

Nobilia, http://nobilianewyork.com/about

Schuller (but I don't think you can get them in the US)

Are you in the SF bay area by any chance? We found one cabinet maker(Demetra) who does custom high gloss cabinets made in the US (6 week turnaround).

We did ikea and they are quite durable. We have a, ahem, very active 4 year old boy who literally slams into our cabinets multiple times a day with chairs, bikes, shoes, step stools, etc. I breath easy because for peanuts, I can replace any cabinet fronts that get badly damaged :)

Great feedback here on Ikea. Our GC says that he has installed Ikea before and has 3 worries: 1) "6 screws" hold the whole box together so it's not as stable as other cabinet boxes 2) Particle board and not plywood 3) the cabinet legs arent stable enough to hold up long term 60 pound per sq ft surface like granite

Sounds like from here - none of that feedback actually has been borne out by the experiences people are writing about.

We are in DC (not SF) and the choices for modern lines that I can see in showrooms are fewer here.

Am tempted by Ikea.

We are in DC also. We've done two kitchens in ikea and have been happy, though we have only been in said kitchens for 2 years (my husband was transferred out of state so we left the first house earlier than we expected). So I can't speak to long term quality, though there were no red flags of any issues. On your contractor's concerns, my first contractor was very familiar with ikea cabs (having done his own kitchen with them) and he was great with double and tripling up on securing it - like extra fastening to the wall, and extra nails holding on the back of the cabinets. But I kind of feel like once you put a solid countertop on, the whole thing just becomes an indestructible mass in any event?

In any event, we browsed a bit at comparable white gloss places. Our kitchen is large enough that it was $8000 for ikea cabinets, so would have been like $75k for poggenpohl - which we were not interested in. We looked at friends' kitchens and went to several showrooms - places that would have cost up to, say, $35k. And were not convinced there was any quality difference at that price point. Sure, could we have gotten better quality cabinets? Yes. But only at an outrageous price point. In the case of my friends who have slightly more expensive cabinets from, say, home depot, they might have plywood boxes, but the plastic-y paint is peeling off certain places in their cabinets a year later.

One place you could check if you're nervous about ikea is porcelanosa. They still have a location in Rockville I think. But we thought the quality looked on par with ikea and they wanted 6x the cost. Plus they have to design the kitchen for you (versus ikea where it's your design -a pro for me).

We have 10+ year old IKEA cabinets wearing very well (slab birch fronts). Quartz counters. Can't speak for their high gloss, but very happy with ours.

1) "6 screws" hold the whole box together so it's not as stable as other cabinet boxes 2) Particle board and not plywood 3) the cabinet legs arent stable enough to hold up long term 60 pound per sq ft surface like granite.

1) 6 screws and 6 dowels and glue hold the sides and bottom together with more screws on top. Whether it is as strong as other cabinet boxes doesn't matter, if it is strong enough, it is strong enough.

2) the plywood vs. furniture board argument is largely just myth. With blum hinges in the door you eliminate a lot of the benefit of plywood.

3) 2" granite is about 30 lbs per sq ft, the standard 1.25" granite is closer to 20 lbs per sq ft, you are using some pretty dense stone to get 60 lbs per square. Each Ikea leg is supposed to hold 125 lbs in addition to the rail which will hold more. If you are that worried get an extra bar on back and attach it to the wall in two places or use more legs. I have 2" concrete countertops on my Ikea cabinets and they are doing OK so far.