Hi mollie, we also have that problem. We've got white molding throughout the downstairs and the kitchen and family room are open to one another. The kitchen cabinets are a cabernet stained birch. After much debate and discussion, we put the white over the windows and the door to the dining room. I am not thrilled with how they look next each other, but I love the dark moldings above the cabinets, and I love the white in the rest of the house. If we put the stained molding everywhere in the kitchen, that would create a strip of dark color that looked kind of odd up there above the door and windows.

I think the ideal solution would be to repaint all the moldings a color that goes better with the stained, so that the contrast is not so strong. However, that just starts a domino effect of "issues" with changing wall color, valances,
the ceiling color etc. Did not want to go there. Darn these open floor plans, decorating gets more challenging.

I have seen others put the stained or darker crown above the windows. In fact the painter thought we should have done it that way. It is really a personal preference. I certainly didn't think about what kitchen cabinets I would eventually have years ago when we chose the white crown molding.

I have nearly the same situation. We simply did not do molding in the kitchen. Only the molding on the cabinets.

Ditto to what chinchette did. We skipped the crown in the non-cabinet spots in the kitchen.

In our prior house, we had maple crown above the kitchen cabinets meeting with white crown molding in the rest of the room. The kitchen was all open to the living/dining room and we wanted crown molding in those rooms as well, but not maple. It looked nice and finished. Essentially, the cabinet crown would simply wrap around the side of the cabinet and 'die' into the wider/taller room crown on the wall, following the curve of that molding. I can try to dig up a photo if it doesn't make sense. It looked fine.

we have similar situation. white crown molding throughtout the house, and our kitchen has cherry cabinets to the ceiling. i had them continue the cherry molding in the kitchen all the way around the ceiling. my rooms are well defined by doorways- so I don't think it looks bad- in our house to not have molding in the kitchen would have looked odd- house was built in the 20's.

Good advice to just skip molding. I wanted to toss in a neighbor's solution, not the typical but looks fantastic: Their kitchen is mostly a separate room, and they just paneled the small wall areas to match the cabinets. Very VERY nice traditional and expensive look for very little additional cost.

I have white crown molding in other rooms, though they're not entirely visible from the kitchen. The kitchen has matching cherry crown molding only above the cabinets, and nowhere else. The crown molding above the two cabinets on either side of the sink wrap around the sides of the cabinets to the wall. There is no molding at all above the sink area, and I think it looks fine. In fact, I choose to have no molding at all around the sink window.

My kitchen pictures will show much better how it looks than I can describe in words.

Rich

Here is a link that might be useful: kitchen pics

We had the same issue. We decided to do cherry molding throughout the kitchen. It's well closed off from other rooms by doors. We went the extra mile and put cherry baseboards too. The baseboards are the same shape as the rest of the house, except cherry instead of white.

The other option we considered was to make it white on the walls. So we bought cherry, figuring we could paint the wall portions white if we wanted (whereas the opposite is much more difficult).

FYI, someone recently posted pictures (which I can't find right now) of the wood/white combo described above, and I thought it looked GREAT. It made each cabinet or small run of cabinets look more like a piece of furniture. So I think either option can work very well.

This is an old picture, before the granite. Our walls are still just primer, although we intend (some day...!) to paint some dark beige color:

{{!gwi}}