Do a natural birch and set up a sun lamp. Not kidding. That will accelerate the natural ambering. It will end up close to your desired tone in about a year.

Sophie - I very much appreciate your helpfulness here. I learn a lot from you. Thank you.

Take a field trip to a couple of local showrooms. Box stores even. Someone locally who has been in business for a few years. Someone is sure to have natural maple or birch on display. Look at the difference between the doors which receive all of the light, and the face frames, which are hidden by the doors and will have changed very little. This is something you need to view in person.

Sophie, you mean a tone similar to the door in my picture? And is that because birch darkens less (or less pink) than the maple? I don't mind how long the process takes as long as the final result isn't way darker than the other wood.

TCK, thank you. That is a good idea too. I really would like to see it in person.

2 pics - not best lighting - but pic 1 is a cabinet in my kitchen. natural maple. 20 years old. Gets light from my kitchen window. Has certainly darkened SOME, but not drastically,I don't think. Pic 2 is my side panel on my fridge (left), next to the trim we stained 20 years ago to try to keep it from yellowing (it's pine obviously) This panel does not get any sun. I don't feel like it's gotten pink.

Open up that maple door and show the face frame halo effect. The wood will be darker where the light reaches, and lighter where it doesn’t.

Sophie - the cabinets are frameless, so not that easy. But - here's a picture with the cabinet opened, and while the suns entering from the right, it's not really showing a drastic difference, although I am sure that there has been some discoloring / yellowing over the years. I will say that I have had good windows with low-e coatings, etc over the entire time we've had this house.

The inside of that door vs the outside of the closed door is the perfect illustration of what time and light do to maple.

Just over 12 years ago, we put maple shaker cabs in my moms house kitchen.

We went with the honey stain. One step up from natural. To me, the cabinets have not changed much in that time. They are warm and just a touch golden. Not yellowed..

I have been blasting the backs of the door samples with my sun lamp, and there is a faint difference after about 2 hours. How many hours should I give them?

If they start on fire at 6 hours, I'd recommend less than that. KIDDING!

Lol. I'm doing them 30 minutes at a time, since it shuts off after than, and I don't remember to turn it back on for a while. If we ever get a sunny day, I will just leave them outside.

Finish is an important part of the color equation. Here's a helpful read.

There is a really good flooring person who sometimes post on the forum. She once said that maple itself turns yellow over time. Oil based finishes also yellow / amber over time and that can be why many woods start to look more yellow or orange, but some woods have their own special quirks and the quirk about maple is it does turn yellow itself. It can be sanded down, but the yellow will return.

I was surprised to see this thread resurrected, but I do have additional information. Scherr's added birch to their 7-year color shift experiment, and here is the result: http://www.scherrs.com/contents/en-us/d53_ColorShift.html (birch is at the bottom).

I am still making some decisions on my cabinets, but one thing I am now considering is pickled oak, as that is what the rest of the woodwork in my house is (doors & trim), and that is what I was trying to match. For some reason, I didn't realize that I could match that. Maybe b/c it's a 100 year old house and I just assumed that whatever process was used on this wood wouldn't be available now? I don't really know. I didn't really even consider it. But one of the contractors who came out said he could match it perfectly, and a whole new world opened up for me.

I would like to see.
Plus, it completes wood changing documentation here on line, about your own home!

I have a history of my gardens because of the gardening forums. Comes in handy! :)

What would you like to see? The pickled oak? I hope you don't mean the sunlamp on the maple because I didn't keep that going. I decided to switch to birch, and now I am wavering between birch and pickled oak.

Keep in mind that if you pickle the oak without some kind of stain over it, you get that 80's pink oak! I've fallen in love with white oak because of the tighter grain. I, too, don't want the yellow -- which is why I don't use any -thane products. I've been staining my oak with a gray, to fill the grain, then been using one, thin application of Minwax' Special Walnut. It doesn't have the red of Provincal, and isn't as dark as Jacobean, both of which I also love.

So! I'd love to see what you end up doing, either way.
Birch to me is very MCM and not my thing, but the wood is beautiful.

The wood door in my post at top is the pickled oak kitchen door we'd be looking to match. There is a ton of that all over my house. Most of it is *not* very pink, but it photographs that way a lot. We'll see. I've still got a few irons in the fire...

Pickled oak was not common 100 years ago. If it's pickled it's more recently done.