Pretty to look at, but the dust and eventually grease and grime if you don't use the items often, so not for me. With that said, when I painted our kitchen cabinets last year, I removed the doors of the cabinet above the fridge, painted it teal, and it displays some vases and seasonal decor.

One or two wouldn’t bother me too much. I am not very artsy when it comes to arranging things. And they would be a magnet for DH to put some cr*p on if there is an available spot unused. Not to mention the dust. We are in the country and it seems worse especially in pollen season.

We fitted open shelves in the kitchen of our last but one house. They were used to store jars containing everything from sugar to pasta to sweet treats :) As they were well away from our range we didn't have too many issues with grease/grime, but we've not repeated the look in our kitchen remodels since...

Here are a few pics from before they were painted and while we were still deciding how far to go with the tile!

Apologies for the terrible screen shot pics and photo bombing dog!

I have some open shelves in the kitchen &laundry room. In the kitchen-they are by the range-but the range is so powerful it hasn't been an issue anymore than the ones in the laundry room. Kitchen shelves have everyday dishes on them. Everything else is in drawers. In fact, I think thenlaundry room may get dustier.

I love this look, but it's too much for me.

Not a fan. I don't want the pressure of keeping everything perfectly lined up and looking beautiful always.

Only in conjuction with live-in maids.

If I had a nice walk in pantry I would get rid of my upper cupboards. My sister didn't have any upper cupboards in her log house. She had wall-to-wall windows over her counters. All her dishes (plates, cups, bowls, glasses) had special pull out drawers. Her pots and pans hung above her island. All her food was in her walk in pantry. Only her spices were in a drawer near her stove. I loved that kitchen. I loved that house!!

Murraysmom I have the 4 pc set of round Pyrex mixing bowls. I also have the 4 pc set of square Pyrex, all 4 with lids! Love them. One of my sister's painstakingly found each piece to the round set to gift to me, our other sister, her own 2 daughters, my other sister's daughters and my daughter.

Our mother had the 4 pc round set. After years and years all she had left was the big yellow bowl. Very sentimental to all of us because of my mom.

We are in a small house now with a much smaller kitchen designed by the previous owner. The saving grace for storage is a wall of cabinets in the eating area, broken by a stack of open shelving. I keep our everyday dishes (Portmeirion Botanic Garden) and some similar pieces in there. In one of the closed cabinets beside, I keep our second set of everyday dishes (Hutschenreuther Medley). Keeping the shelves clean and tidy has not been a problem at all, partly because most of the items are used frequently. I also find that having the open section breaks up the look of a phalanx of closed cabinets.

Miniscule, I love your setup!! It looks so clean and the open shelves are just beautiful the way you have them set!!

Katlan, I love the story of your Pyrex. It makes them so much more precious, doesn't it? Mine, too, have a story. I found just the two biggest at a consignment shop years ago and bought them. Then my sister (who has passed away) gave me the little red one. That left just one size missing. Well I found that one at another consignment shop but the color isn't right for this particular set but the size is, so that works for me. :)

As for your square ones - that is so awesome!!! I didn't even know they existed until a few months ago. An elderly neighbor (and friend) was having an estate sale in anticipation of selling her house. She moved to assisted living a few years ago and was now ready to let go. Anyway, I wanted a memento of her so her daughter-in-law let me in before the sale and I got to choose something of Helen's. I saw a square Pyrex, just one piece and liked it but got something else. When I got home I looked up the square pyrex and thought they were pretty neat. So the day of the sale I went up to the house. I was second in line. The guy in front of me had gotten there over an hour earlier. The moment we were let into the house, he made a beeline for the pyrex! He was friends with the person handling the sale and she had alerted him to the piece. He told me he had a whole room of pyrex!! That's quite the collector. I love pyrex, but I do use mine. I don't have room to collect something like that.

Anyway, I love your story and all the more so for the sentimentality!!

I have a few open shelves where big things -- like ceramic pots -- get stored, and the rest is hidden behind cabinet doors. If you are debating whether to have all open shelves rather than standard upper cabinets, here is the way to make a decision: open all of your cabinet doors, stand back, and take in the view. If you like seeing everything that is in sight out in the open 24/7 and are happy with how it is all arranged, then maybe open shelves are right for you. If you are like me, and you have a lot of things stuffed into the cabinets, some of which have no more room left, and some of which contain completely non-matching items, you might be happier with traditional cabinets.

Thank you murraysmom. I too enjoy the personal, sentimental stories!

I like them but only for display. I have 3 open shelves which I use to display my husbands mothers copper items. I have plenty of cabinet space and drawers plus a large pantry so I wasn't giving up storage space.

I could't have them. Just one more thing to clean for one reason. Storage for another.

I like the look, but I wouldnt want to have them in my own home as I see them as another thing to dust and keep clean. If I were going to to that route, I'd have glass fronted cabinets instead.

Not for my house. We are not minimalist enough, or tidy enough to pull that off. Plus we have a cat who would just love that as a kitty condo.

I definitely am! I've collected too much pretty dishes and glassware over the years to keep it hidden away in cabinets, and everything that's currently housed in my uppers is pretty enough to be displayed. I hate the look of glass-front doors, and I keep my cabinets neat - since I don't have any clutter, I don't need to use them to hide clutter. We had open shelving in our old house, and you needed to dust them about as often as you need to dust closed cabinets. I think people just don't realize how much dust gets into their cabinets because they think the doors are keeping all of it out. I know I can keep them looking nice, and they're very functional for me. I've legitimately forgotten that some of my serving bowls existed because they were hidden by a cabinet door. Can't really have that problem with open shelving, huh? We are gonna keep our existing uppers around, though, just in case we decide to sell.

Never. I cringe when I see Joanna you-know-who gushing about the ones she puts in. It’s too Little House on the Prairie for me. And dirty dust-magnets.

Who's Joanna?

I don't have enough cupboard space and almost had shelving put up last week to move stuff out of my cupboards and off my countertops to give me more space for dry goods. I bought a metal rack instead. haha ignore the 4 tins of cookies my brother bought on sale. The cookie jar is for dog treats

Pretty kitchen! You are neat and organized; I could never keep this clean!

I'm guessing Joana Gaines.

Open shelves are fine for a few things but they do catch more dust than cupboards. I like plain glass doors with a little lighting in them to show off items . yes, cupboards get dust in them too but not nearly as fast as open shelves.

I recently removed 6 upper kitchen cabinets and replaced them with 3 open shelves. I love them. Should have done it years ago.

Joanna Gaines of course. From Fixer Upper.

Of HGTV I assume. I had cable for about 3 months or so, years and years ago. So many channels and nothing I wanted to watch! So now I'm totally out of the loop and not familiar with the current shows and designers. :-)

So this thread has made me think about why I really like some open shelving and intensly dislike others.

I like open shelving when the following is mostly true:

• It's not anywhere near the cooktop at which point it WOULD be a grease magnet.
• it's part of the overall design, not an afterthought.
• It serves a practical purpose ( such as my own shelf up-thread, which serves as our tea/coffee and drink station).
• It serves a design purpose, such as topping a backsplash, or emphasizing or continuing a horizontal line.
• It's one single shelf. No stacked shelves. (I guess that's the Little house look?)
• It's low enough to be easily reached. Essentially an extension of the countertop, which might otherwise be cluttered with the items sitting on it.
• It holds daily used items, so dust is not an issue, as they will go in the dishwasher after use anyway. Any storage jars and tins will need their tops wiped every so often. Thing is, they also need to be wiped when sitting on the counter, haha.
• It sits below wall cabinetry, which eliminates at least 3/4s of the dust that otherwise might settle from above.

Upthread are plenty of pics of very modern spaces with open shelves that I just don't see as being in any way reminders of Little House on the Prairie ;-)

Most of the additional pics below break one or more of my rules, but could easily be tweaked to conform to most of them.

Right of the bat, his one breaks the most important of my rules: it sits right next to the cooktop. Ughh. But designwise it's a beauty. Nothing would prevent one from continuing the bottom line of the wall cabs near or above the sink for example.

Like how this one tops the backsplash. Replace the staged photo-shoot items with personal, everyday items and a piece of art or small collection and voila, it's a kitchen with personality.

A very simple, low-key and calm kitchen. Love the framed art resting on it. But again, I'd surround with some everyday stuff and a pretty thing or two. Homey, modern and practical. (Please just ignore the island cooktop without a hood, lol!)

Pippabean those are a lot of rules that need to mainly be followed in order for you to be ok with the shelves. Dont get me wrong, I love the photos you posted but all those rules make me exhausted :-)

ETA the kissing cats are fab. I looked at this thread when I was deciding on open shelves. Yours made me pause. I love it. On the other hand, mine break all your rules.

ilikefriday - lol! They are just MY rules for myself.

I hope that maybe they could be "guidelines" or things to think about, for others.

I'm currently helping my daughter with her kitchen remodel. It helps me tremendously to have a checklist when drawing up layouts.

I planned my own kitchen. Let me tell you that planning a layout using cabinetry requires knowing many more "rules" than adding a shelf or two. Which I think is why, diy kitchens often run into trouble. From functionality issues such as no awareness of the ice-water-stone-fire "rules", to practical issues, such as doors or drawers that don't open all the way due to lack of fillers at corners or end of cab runs, etc. Rules, or if you like, "guidelines" to follow and check off, are your friend!

Haha, we love the kissing cats too! /ᐠ=ᆽ=ᐟ \ =◕ᆽ◕ฺ=

I think it can look nice but it’s not for me personally.

My open shelves are for my cookbooks.

The rest are closed shelving. I do see some setups where open shelves look good, but essentially, most of my dishes don't match well enough, and I don't want to deal with dust and/or cat fur. Or cats deciding to climb up and over the breakables, especially if they just came from the litter box...

So, for me open shelves are very impractical.

Okay, I DO have one non-cookbook open shelf. Small and décor, only, and it is high enough that my cats won't get tempted.

Pippabean - I think checklists are good too. When I constructed my open shelves I removed 6 cabinets. I got 3 of the 4 shelves that I had planned in place and then I got sick of hanging them. I posted here on Houzz and asked how it looked with 3 instead of 4. A couple of folks said it was fab so that is what I ran with. I am more of a work on the fly kind of gal. LOL.

artemis - Luckily my two cats don't ever shed ;-)

I’m a fan when there is also storage. An example is what we are planning. We will have more than enough cabinets upper & lower on 2 walls to fit all of our stuff (and then some) so on the 3rd wall we are doing a 56 inch wide cut out (opens into the living room) about 5-10 inches above the lowers on that side with 3 open shelves per side of the cutout. I am not a fan of storing dishes out in the open and I HATE clutter but I do love antiques so I plan on putting a couple little antique decor items on them. I’ll also be putting a vintage print of a dandelion (yellow not fluff) on there since that’s the “flower” my son brings me everytime he goes outside.
adding in I’ve personally never been a fan of china cabinets ether. I don’t see having things in your house that you never use or enjoy

YES!!! to open shelving. Many of the complaints about open shelves are myths:

• Myth #1 They get cluttered. No, they don't. I use mine for my everyday white dishes and glassware. Everything has it's place, so it looks clean. Some people may be cluttering their shelves with too much stuff or mismatched stuff. That's a problem with the homeowner and not the shelves themselves.
• Myth #2 The dishes get dusty. No, they don't. I'm in a household with three people, and we cycle through most of our dishes every two days, so they never have a chance to gather dust.
• Myth #3 You have to dust the shelf itself all the time. No, you don't. I can't even see over my shelf to see if it's dusty. It's 18" above the countertop. It's been a year now, and I've never dusted. (See below.)

• Myth #4 Open shelves means "no" overhead cabinets whatsoever. Most people have a combination of open shelves and cabinets. My last kitchen had "all" open shelves and a large pantry to store ugly items. You need the extra space--either a pantry or some overhead cabinets--for storing unattractive, mismatched items.
• Myth #5 Shelves alongside a stovetop get greasy. This is partially true. Items that never get used at all will take many months to get greasy. My frequent-use dishware--including bowls that I only use once every three weeks--don't get greasy. Grease accumulation may depend on your venting system and what kind of cook you are.
• Myth #6 You need gorgeous or expensive dishware to make open shelves look good. Nope. My dishware cost $40. It looks fine.

I have no CONS for open shelves. That being said, here are the PROs:

• Open shelves open up a small kitchen, getting rid of that claustrophobic feeling.
• They are significantly less expensive than overhead cabinets.
• They look less "kitcheny" in an open floorplan.
• Guests always know where glasses and mugs are, so they can help themselves.
• Dishware is easily retrieved while preparing meals.
• They are quieter than cabinets. No more cupboards opening and shutting or slamming when family members search for something.
• Overhead cabinets tend to look dated pretty quickly and are a beast to refinish or replace.If you decide you don't like your open shelves, they're easy to replace, so you can change your mind down the road!

I hope I've made a few people reconsider their position on open shelves. I'll never go back to "all" overhead cupboards unless I have to.

@tintin43 - Your "myths" you listed aren't myths at all. They are just different from your personal experience. You evidently have the time and the personality to be orderly and neat. Many people do not. It does not appear that your post takes into account that not everyone is the same as you, or has the same resources as you, or has the same circumstances as you. You didn't mention pets and their hair.

• Open shelves open up a small kitchen, getting rid of that claustrophobic feeling.

Actually, a small kitchen is where I would recommend upper cabinets the most, as they provide significantly more storage than shelves.

• They are significantly less expensive than overhead cabinets.

This is true. If people need to save money on their kitchen reno, foregoing upper cabinets would save a great deal.

• They look less "kitcheny" in an open floorplan.

A kithen looks like a kitchen. Open shelving isn't going to make a kitchen look less kitcheny, and anyway, why do you want your kitchen to look less kitcheny. It is what it is, appliances, sink, counters and all.

• Guests always know where glasses and mugs are, so they can help themselves.

Not really a life-changer. I just say to my guests, once, "the glasses are in the cabinet next to the sink."

• Dishware is easily retrieved while preparing meals.

No different from retrieving them from cabinets.

• They are quieter than cabinets. No more cupboards opening and shutting or slamming when family members search for something.

Cabinets are made today with soft close hinges.

• Overhead cabinets tend to look dated pretty quickly and are a beast to refinish or replace.If you decide you don't like your open shelves, they're easy to replace, so you can change your mind down the road!

Cabinets looking dated quickly is because the homeowner picked a trendy design or color. I've seen kitchen cabinets 20 or more years old that still look great. Not sure how you'd replace shelving to something very different, other than if they're worn and sagging you might want new ones in the same place.

• we cycle through most of our dishes every two days, so they never have a chance to gather dust.
• Myth #3 You have to dust the shelf itself all the time. No, you don't. I can't even see over my shelf to see if it's dusty. It's 18" above the countertop. It's been a year now, and I've never dusted. (See below.)

Ok. Well I don't know what type of light you get in your place but in the early morning, if I leave clean dishes in my countertop dish rack overnight and the light hits them just so, I can see a thin layer of dust on them. Dust accumulates continually and if you really don't have any in your house, I want to know what type of sorcery you have going on because I want the same thing!!! :D Also, just because you don't see the dust on your shelf above the countertop, doesn't mean it's not there. You opt not to dust a frequently used shelf for a year and all I can say is 'ick'. I don't dust my ceiling light fixtures often but I'm not touching them every day or putting my dishes on them. Dust is an allergen for most people, hence the reluctance for most to adopt open storage over closed.

I think dust doesn't accumulate because we cycle through our dishes every two or three days. Even a finger-swipe right now doesn't show much dust in the spots the dishes don't cover.

I'm curious now: where do you live? How is your house built? I can't imagine dusting any shelf in my house after two days and not seeing dust.

As for pet hair, we have a cat and dog. Their hair does not reach our open shelf over the counter. However, we have an open-shelved credenza of seldom-used dishes. The credenza sits on the floor and gets pet hair and also quite a bit of dust on the shelves.

Open shelves don't work for me either. I have no trouble with keeping things neat and looking good, but the dust and grease issues are not for me. Dusting is my least favorite household chore. I see no reason to increase the places I have to perform the dreaded task. Whether the shelf is at my eye level or not, it would have to be dusted weekly. That means removing everything, checking on dishes being clean and dusting the shelf, putting everything back. Glass front doors are good enough for me, should I wish to display my kitchen wares. In my ideal world, my house would be dusted twice a week, by someone other than myself.

Dust accumulates so darned fast. That's why I despise dusting. You can see dust again on my surfaces the very next day after I cleaned them. It is a thankless and unsatisfying task.

Shannon_WI...I'm honestly not a tidy person. (My mother would laugh if she heard someone accuse me of being tidy!) I've shown my 10-year-old how to place items on our shelf when she removes dishes from the washer. The same items go into the same spots every time. We have overhead cabinets for the mismatched and messy stuff, and, yes, the interior of those cabinets is messy.

Myth #1 They get cluttered. No, they don't. I use mine for my everyday white dishes and glassware. Everything has it's place, so it looks clean.

That's a very subjective point of view. Please don't misunderstand this as a personal attack, but looking at the picture that you posted, your kitchen would be way too cluttered for what I ideally want a kitchen to look like.

I am not saying I always live up to this ideal. But having closed cabinets large capacity lower drawers, and built-in appliances (or at least an appliance garage) helps a lot in reducing clutter. Ideally, I don't want anything to sit on either the counters or any hypothetical shelves.

But then of course, as I said, this is subjective. Others might not be bothered by openly displayed collections of items, and they might not even perceive that display as clutter.

Tintin, you note what you think are myths about open shelves. What do you think are the benefits? You keep very little on your shelf. Is your choice aesthetic or functional?

Ilikefriday - do you have photos of your kitchen?

Thanks for asking, Zalco. My choice is both aesthetic and functional. I like the open feeling. We keep all of our daily dishware and most of our glassware on our shelf. Extra glassware and mismatched mugs go in the cabinets.

The PROs or benefits are listed in my original post. I really like the grab-and-go functionality. In previous homes, I was always opening and shutting cabninets, looking for something specific. Also, a HUGE benefit is the cost effectiveness of open shelving. I created dozens of cabinet variations, and each came back with a drastically different price quote. The cost difference between 42" high cabinets and 30" high cabinets is huge. I just crunched the numbers, and we saved over $1100 by installing a 75" long shelf below 30" high cabinets as opposed to installing 42" cabinets with "no" shelf.

As far as everyone's dust concerns go, I'm perplexed. Maybe my Dyson vacuum and brand new windows lower my dust levels. Also, the surface of my shelf--a wood shelf with NO poly--may contribute to its extremely low dust level, along with the frequent use of the dishes. The slick, glossy surfaces in my home tend to have visible dust.

@sunfeather - Here you go. This is what my kitchen looks like today. Not quite complete. My mural needs a few touch ups from where the 4" backsplash was removed.

Wow-eee!!!! Gorgeous mural!!!

@sunfeather - Thanks!