maybe try reeded/ribbed/fluted glass for a blurry look…

Wine bar with reeded glass doors · More Info

If that type of cabinet is what you like, why not add one in your dining room?

debra

We are in process of remodel and can I eat go in next week. We are doing a section of our upper cabinets in glass. We have a stained rift white oak cabinet and are planning to do a bronzed/amber colored glass. It’s see through, but tinted. I’m really excited to see how it will look when installed. There are different shades of different colors of tinted glass. So that could be an option for you.

I was going to suggest reeded glass too as @elunia suggests. I have a reeded glass panel on my pantry door & you can’t see detail although it’s a corner pantry so shelves are not close to door. I think you can get varying degrees of diffusion in reeded glass. I think with the $$ you’re spending on cabinets you’d be happier with a nicer finish than putting paper inside to cover the glass. There are lots of different glass options so I’d go that route for sure.

Reese’s but without panes.

Yes I agree - no panes. Forgot to note that

Is the issue how much it would bother you to see -- what is it that would be visible? It sounds like a salad or dessert plate. --- ?

All but 2 of my upper cabinets have glass window pane doors. The largest of the cabinets is difrectly over the dishwasher, so all of my plain white dinner plates are in that cabinet, plus my water tumblers, cereal bowls, juice glasses. In other glass-doored cabinets I can see (and so can the world) a sack of Gold Medal flour, a box of PG Tips tea and Bigelow Tea (no pretty canister -- like, 2 boxes). There are coffee mugs and a flashlight -- actually there is a vintage pitcher and some cocktail glasses I never use.

Of course there are also pretty things like my favorite Spode teapot with the snake and flowers, and this

but there's nothing ugly about a shelf with plain dishes and cooking stuff in a kitchen. I really like the way light bounces off the cabinets and the lightness they give the room. If the price of that is everybody seeing my husband's box of Quaker granola, well, okay.

Are the insides of your cabinets going to look much different than this?

Coffee Zone · More Info

Mine are window pane, and I don't have those 2 decorative plates on top, just more juice glasses and ice cream bowls. And the backs of mine are just white.

Pretty enough for me.

You might want to look at this article. Most window-pane doors are clear glass, not reeded or blurry.

https://www.houzz.com/magazine/kitchen-confidential-glass-cabinet-doors-are-a-clear-winner-stsetivw-vs~56292896

mytwo cents - what is that cat egg shaped thing? Inquiring minds want to know 😁

It's a cat-egg shaped thing, sold to me by a woman who bought it in Caltigrone Sicily -- which has been making ceramics since 2000 BC -- because she'd never seen anything like it . Funnily it reminds of a favorite black and white hat I once bought in Sicily that I lost (no rubber ears and whiskers, just a similar arresting spirit) . Since my kitchen has a black and white checkerboard floor, it's really not all that odd as decor there

I never feed it after midnight.

How about stained glass?

What about perforated metal?

mytwo cents - thanks for reply! Pretty cute

We were given a choice by the cabinet maker for upper glass as we had same issue. We chose a wavy, antique look glass and did not put glass in the entire door.

If your cabinet maker has access to Bendheim Glass, you can get white laminated glass with varying levels of opacity:

Level 4

Level 5

@Seabornman Do you have any pics of what you mean you didn't put glass in the whole door? There's a glass I like called Aquatex and it's a wavy vintage looking glass we had in 2 other old houses.

@mytwo cents It's housing almost nothing like dishes. It's my only place to store my Tupperware, kids lunch boxes, vitamins, random stuff.

@palimpsest - I'm hesitant on the frosted because it's white and my cabinets in the rest of the kitchen are creamy off white and samples of frosted glass w darker wood tend to look more modern aesthetic and not a more vintage I'm going for.

How about using decorative containers big enough to hold your stuff? I have vitamins and other remedies collected into one unlidded box on my kitchen shelves. It's not much more difficult to take the box off the shelf to get the vitamins than leaving the bottle on the shelf. I realize Tupperware is more of a challenge, but assume the kids' lunch boxes are sweet enough to not be an eyesore on the shelves.

This last set is expensive (from Joss and Main) but all the others are actually very inexpensve, from craft stores and the big box stores, or Amazon. And of course you can just get plain solid color containers and mix in ones that are more decorative.

Reading your "dilemma" caused me to look at my own glass-door cabinets, and despite the fact my kitchen is both sunny and well lit, it's not all that easy to see what's behind the clear glass doors. The shelves are deep and the interiors aren't lit. The external lighting tends to bounce of the glass. But I think my white kitchen would look and feel a lot heavier and more enclosed if it didn't have so many glass doors on the upper cabinets

If the aesthetics of the interior concern you with regular glass on the doors, I think @mytwocents gave you a fantastic, practical solution. There are so many nice “boxes” you can use to hide the granola.

I think plain glass is a good option, especially on an older piece.

Plus, if you are crafty enough to have put decorative paper on your glass doors past, you can get plain containers in the sizes that exactly fit what you need and then wrap them with exactly whatever suits your kitchen style.

You could do fabric curtains behind the glass. Or you could just do decorative paper that isn't white.

Bendheim Clear Ice Fern

VanDykes Restorers Florex

Great ideas w the boxes/baskets. I probably can upgrade some of my colorful old plastic bins w the nicer clear - and add some neutral contact paper or something to the fronts to neutralize the colorful contents.

This is the glass I like. It’s soft and very subtle movement but it’s not as obscuring as I want. The plain frosted looked too modern. I actually had my samples stacked last night w the frosted under the Aquatex (in the photo) and was like omg perfect! So I can apply the frosting sheets like from Depot and frost the backs and I think will get me to where I want.

I think this will give the blocking I want to frost the inside of the subtle glass I like.