Can you do only 2 shelves and leave 1 section larger? I would line them up, that would bother me daily.

You don't

I lined mine up. How are you lighting them if you do solid shelves?

It's not really possible to line the shelves up with the mullions. Even if they are lined up from one vantage point, if you move to another vantage point, they won't appear lined up. Whether that bothers you or not depends on your personality. But it's why I opted to replace mullioned doors, and got clear glass instead with bevelled edges.

Regarding Hillside House's comment about lighting - my choice was not to light my glass cabinets. I'd heard from a couple people that they ended up not turning on the inside cabinet lighting much. I do not miss the lighting of the interiors.

So my other option is to have the cabinets at the end of that run done with a different door style. Which I can either paint to match or do in a different color like grey or black.

This is the other door that has 3 sections.

It also comes in black,

So it would be like this image I found on Pinterest

Sure they can be lined up. If the horizontal edge of the shelf lines up with the muntins they line up. I actually don't do glass doors unless it's for display or neatly stacked dishes and I can line the shelves up with the muntins.

Mine are one sheet of glass so I don't have that worry.

You could order a 3rd piece of glass from a local glass store.

Unless your viewing angle changes height, like you climb on a chair, it doesn't affect the shelf/muntin alignment. How could it? They are on the same horizontal plane. That's like saying the drawers in your lower cabinets only line up from certain angles.

We used clear glass with no mullions on the cabinet doors. For the shelves we had the cabinet builder make wooden “frames” as shelves that the glass company installed glass into. The wooden “frame” part of the shelves act as millions. You can position your shelves however you want. And since the shelves are glass, the light shines through.

The reason I did this is that I don’t care for the look of the front edge of a glass shelf, but I wanted the light to go through. Mine are white, but you could have your DH make this kind of shelf using cherry or walnut.

I’m doing ikea as this is a kitchen in a guest house, not my main kitchen. The only other white glass door options are not great.

Actually the idea to have one bigger section may be the way to go. I can make the center section bigger and then I can do this.

I love the look of coffee cups hung from cup hooks. So I can hang the cups and have room for drinking glasses in that section.

Hillside House - I swear to you that the lining-up is affected by where you are standing in the kitchen. I had mullioned glass doors and if they lined up with the shelves when I looked at them straight on, they did not line up if I moved to the side a few steps. I replaced them with clear glass doors. Please go somewhere where there are mullioned glass upper cabinet doors on display and see for yourself before questioning my first-hand experience.

I don't have any glass doors, but I've always rather liked the plaid effect caused by thin glass shelves not aligned with the muntins.

Friedajune: Please don't assume that you are the only one with first hand experience. I had them in my last kitchen, so I don't need to go see them on display. I looked at them every day, for years, from all sorts of angles. They always lined up, whether I was 2 feet away, straight on, or 20 feet away, from an angle.

Here you go; photos from three different angles.

Straight on, shelves lined up with muntins:

Angle 1, shelves still lined up:

Angle 2, shelves still lined up:

So as this is a guest loft apartment kitchen it will generally stay neat and not gather bits and bobs like an everyday kitchen. I actually have a set of matched glassware, wine glasses, and blue pottery dishware. So this one cabinet will stay uncluttered with logo mugs or glasses.

dishes,

Glasses, the Corning Ware dishes will go in the drawers below. There are at least 8 pottery coffee mugs that match the dishes above.

Really the approximate inch difference between the mullion and the shelf should not be enough to create a substantial parallax effect

If you are keeping your head at the same plane moving from side to side, the shelf front should stay in the same relationship to the mullion.

If you move up and down the relationship may change slightly if there is a large enough gap between the front of the shelf and the mullion. But think about it. If the shelf were fixed to the mullion, it could not change relationship: it IS the same plane, then. Creating a small gap should not substantially alter this horizontal relationship. So yes Freida I question your first-hand experience.

The difference comes more from sitting versus standing and from different people being different heights. So I can line them up so it works perfectly for me, but once I sit down the line will change. Additionally, I'm 5'3" but if my neighbor who is 6'4" comes in, his view will be different than mine.

Are you sitting on the floor in front of the cabinets?

Of course you will see either the bottom or the top of the shelf except the one that is eye level but the front edge of the shelf lines up with the mullion if it lines up with the mullion.Period.

How the rest of the shelf reaches the vanishing point (Horizon) is a function of the shelf being three dimensional, just like everything else.

If you don't want to see the bottom of a shelf, don't put in glass doors.

What CPArtist said! (I was going to say it, but she said it perfectly, so no need to repeat it!) In our household, we range from 5'10" to 6'7"....that's a big difference in perspective! The shelves absolutely do not line up for all of us -- but I put in glass shelves, so it's not that noticeable in our Kitchen. (I don't hang mugs inside a cabinet, so that wasn't a consideration for me. If you want to do that, you'll probably have to stick with wood shelves.)

Honestly? I don't think most people will think about it or notice it one way or the other! Even if they do initially, they won't think about/notice it later.

For everything to line up all the time all lines would have to recede for everyone from their particular eye level and the shelves would have to do this, and be different for everybody. But that's not the way the world works.

For me, this is where function trumps form. I need my kitchen cabinets with glass (all for dishes or glassware) to work with what I'm putting IN the cabinets themselves. I do not want to be limited by having to have the shelves the same distance apart when what I'm putting in these cabinets doesn't work for me that way.

In my LR, I worked for a week getting my bookshelves, that include some antique wooden boxes and antique porcelain, properly lined up, balanced and symmetrical. So long as the books were in the cabinet by general type (fiction/classics/non-fiction), it was important that the shelves look "right".

But my kitchen? NO! It's a working kitchen and it simply must work for me. In the end, the shelves are level across but it took multiple times moving these shelves around to get just the right balance and have them still hold what I need on the proper shelf.

I can only say that the shelves not lining up from different vantage points annoyed me to the extent that I spent the money and time to switch out brand new custom glass mullioned doors for doors with clear glass. As Anglo put so well, the shelves themselves become the muntins. Beveling the edges of the glass doubled the cost, but was worth it for the elegant look. I am simply responding to the OP's question.