You didn't mention whether you are talking about undercabinet or wall-mount/chimney- style hood or something else. Anyway, Kobe hoods give a lot of bang for the buck, and are well-made, with Kobe providing great customer service to boot. So check out that brand. Another choice is Costco which sells name-brand hoods at amazing prices. Typically lower-priced hoods use mesh filters, but Costco sells hoods with baffle filters which are better than mesh filters. Plus, you are likely aware of Costco's wonderful return policy should anything go wrong with the hood. Costco used to carry the Kobe Brilla hoods which was a fantastic deal, cause that's a nice hood. But I just checked the website and the Brilla hoods aren't there any more. Costco changes its inventory frequently; may be worth a trip to a Costco store to see what they have in the store. The Costco website right now shows Ancona hoods, but I am not familiar with that brand. Again, there's the Costco return policy... P.S. the 33" height above the cooktop you mentioned should be the maximum; 30" is pretty much ideal, but 33" is OK. Just don't go higher than 33". Below, I tried to direct-link to the hoods at Costco, but Costco will only link directly to the large kitchen appliances page. So, from there, search for "hood". Hoods at Costco Kobe Hoods Website

I can't speak from experience, but we were recently faced with the same decision. I liked the way the glass looked becase it seemed to open up the space more, but we decided to go with the stainless because we too were worried about the dirt/grease on the glass. Our designer warned against the glass saying it will look terrible if it isn't totally clean. Also my DH went saw a glass model in a store and it was covered in dust (as usual in a store) and it looked terrible. The SS model in the same store looked fine - and I'm sure no one was cleaning those. (Now please know I do plan to clean my hood... just not often! ;) ) Hopefully the SS will look OK between cleanings too. Hope that helps- good luck!

Hi, I may be able to answer the wood hood question since we went through the same thing recently. It sounds like he's suggesting a wider hood than range width, which is recommended/common although from what I've learned on this site the same width as the range can also work depending on the blower and how the range is used. If you do decide to stick to a 30" wide hood, have you checked the specific dimensions of the hood insert you are wanting to use? They should be slightly smaller than the actual hood width to allow for them to go up inside of the wood hood. While we are going with a 6inch wider hood than our rangetop, we're going to be using a bluestar rangetop and plan on lots of wok cooking. We did have to go back to our cabinetmaker requesting the wider hood and did have to give up some upper cabinet space to achieve what we wanted. Depending on how your parents use their stove, a 30inch hood could work. I'm not sure about the space needed for a stainless hood- I've seen them both butted right up against cabinets and with space in between. Hopefully someone with more expertise will pipe in on that-

(A wall mount range hood is probably not what the OP asked for.) Mating to a 7.5 foot ceiling should not be difficult; even Wolf's large Pro Island hoods are only 18 inches high, leaving the base at 3 ft over the counter with a 7.5-foot ceiling. And higher helps the view across an island. However, unless the cooktop is only 24 inches, a 30-inch hood is too small for an island application. One needs to overlap the cooking zone on all four sides to account for rising plume expansion, and throw in a bit more size to account for cross drafts, depending on location. In any case, to say that the kitchen has a duct is far too little information. Where is the duct relative to the cooking zone, what diameter is it? Is there a blower at the other end or do you need one in the hood, etc? Can the duct be replaced?