My main dislike of the oak/laminate cabs was that in every rental I lived in that had them they were never plum nor level.. The doors never lined up with each other. I am sure this was due to installation but it is a very common feature of alot of kitchens that have them and it has negatively tainted them for me.

Too many variables changed from the first oak and laminate picture to the other two pictures. Meaning, it's not the cabinets that are bad, it's the context in which they're used. Used in a more modern kitchen and a more modern house, the oak and laminate would look fine. Instea they're often found in suburban homes of a certain era, which automatically 1) looks out of context and 2) dates the home.

Similar to roarah's complaint, there should be a consistent, level horizontal line of oak, but in the photo, the drawer stack lacks a second piece of oak, so they don't line up.

Of course, drawers not lining up cleanly could happen with the other designs as well, and it would drive me nuts.

What I do like about some of them are the integrated drawer pulls - i.e. hardware not required. I like the last two photos, but not the Siematic one. I suppose it is minimalism, but it's just too plain and featureless for my taste.

I think that the oak somehow just doesn't work on those. And particularly at that time frame, oak = country, and techline white = contemporary, and this somehow tried to marry them, with bad results.

Well, I only like the Bulthaup all wood of the pictures you posted. For me, a really simple style almost demands a really beautiful material. Laminate, in any color, isn't beautiful to me. Perhaps a very fun color would persuade me otherwise, but almond sure doesn't and pure white isn't getting me either. (But I love white painted wood kitchen cabinets.)

I think roarah and geokid make a valid point about the context and personal perceptions. For me it's often about the perception of quality and durability.

The first kitchen could look reasonably nice, but it reminds me of the laminate cabs my parents had in our Moscow home in the 70's-80's. The design was very similar, except that the trim was aluminum instead of oak and the laminate had a chintz pattern - small yellow roses with gray foliage.

The chintzy pattern clashed with the metal trim, and the quality was poor. After a few years the laminate chipped and swelled from moisture seeping inside the panels.

Funny enough, the second kitchen with all-laminate surfaces makes me suspicious too. Is it as good in reality as it looks in this "glam" shot?

The Bulthaup has something about it that says "quality": the bookmatched veneers, the way the integrated pulls are done, and more. It looks expensive and upscale. The pictures are done in a way that projects the high-end look of the kitchen

Here's the chintzy laminate/aluminum trim atrocity that populated kitchens in the 70's and turned me away from many laminates. The top picture is the pattern we had, and the bottom photo shows a similar used set for sale online in Russia. My parents had a better taste to put in a plain white tile backsplash and neutral solid yellowish-beige vinyl floor and to cover the gaps between the cabs with metal strips, but still...

So context is important: these laminate and oak cabinets were put in a number of kitchens out of context:
1) What is a correct context for this style of cabinet
2) By extension, doesn't this mean that there are kitchens being installed that are out of context with Their houses?

Lana, the black and white kitchen is SieMatic which is known for it's high quality, but SieMatic is the developer of the integrated aluminum pull like in your parent's kitchen.

Do you think the oak integrated pull was a response to people not embracing the integrated aluminum pull?

It's just aluminum milled finish stock, no matter how expensive the cabinets are you cant get anything else. Do you think other, powder coated finishes would help?

I'm having a hard time finding a picture of those cabinets used well. This one (below) is similar. Another thing that adds to the general dislike of these cabinets is that the oak bands seem out of proportion to the cabinets. They are too thick and heavy and look bulky and cumbersome, and are not pleasing to the eye.

Yes, many kitchens are out of context with their homes. It goes back to what you said on another thread about how recently built homes are a hodgepodge of styles and finishes. But most of the time it's not as glaring a difference as these cabinets.

I think the aluminum in this case is anodized in a natural color, not mill finish. Anodized will not oxidize over time, mill finish (bare aluminum metal) will actually rub off on your hands. Next time you move an aluminum ladder, look at your hands. Black soil.
Maybe the bad associations of the 80's lamin-oak doors is because they were made from the cheapest particleboard, and many people who lived with these for years experienced the doors falling off and the drawers coming apart in their hands. Bad memories of the first low-rent apartments.
Casey

The oak/laminate I think is mostly associated with builder grade cabinets, tract homes of the 80's along with the country look so popular back then--ducks, hearts, colonial blue, etc. And yes, the almond gives a dingy appearance. The Siematic and Bulthaup would never be seen in a tract home, unless redone by the owner. Im really surprised they are still making these!

I've never analyzed this before altho had the Euro-modern style cabinets (your pic #) in a house in the early 80's. In fact we redid the kitchen in that (at the time) 5 year old house and I actually chose those cabinets! My only thought since has been "why on earth did I pick those". In my defense we had recently returned from living in Europe for a few years and I was still under the influence of Euro-modern style. I did choose the white with oak as I thought it looked cleaner. Another huge consideration, at the time, was that those cabinets were inexpensive and we knew we'd be selling that house within a couple of years. House sold quickly 2 years later for what that's worth. I think the cabinets were suitable for the style of that house as it was a late 70's generic tract house without much identifiable style.

The only cabinets I can say I like and might consider in my own home are the wood grain in your last pic. The grain matches, they actually could be real wood, and they are without pulls of any type which gives them a clean line and higher quality appearance. One of the things I dislike with modern style is the frequent use of non-attractive (to me) hardware and trim and use of synthetics. IMO it often cheapens and brings down the overall attractiveness of the cabinets or furniture.

I can't find a picture of them used well either, but I think I will look at shore houses on real estate. At least here, people are more accepting of "contemporary" , but also maintain their shore houses for part-time rental -- often without updating them to the extreme of changing a kitchen or bath just because it's dated. So often the entire setting for these oak and laminate cabinets is pretty ugly in the pictures.--and we are only seeing pictures because it is being redone.

But there Must have been something about these cabinets that appealed to people enough at the time that they were used so much. I renovated my first kitchen in 1997 and these cabinets were still available from Wood-Mode at that point, as a full-custom cabinet.

You are right Casey, it's anodized. But it still seems like a rather unrefined finish for such an expensive cabinet. Why not heavily plated chrome or brass, or a good powder coat?

I am not sure that the disconnect between these cabinets in their respective houses is any more than the current over-fancy kitchens going into plain houses today. it's just that we like these kitchens so we ignore the same disconnect.

I donâÂÂt hate the almond/oak laminate but I do associate it with the little six by six almond/white ceramic tile with dirty grout and somewhere nearby an odd colored lazy boy recliner with remnants of leakyâÂÂs on the seat section. When there have been people on the kitchen forum in the past asking what to do with these sorts of cabinets I always recommend that they take the uppers out and add stacked horizontal oak glassed doored cabinetry. So, something can be done with them for an update. Ikea used to carry the perfect cabinets for that idea.
Actually I have bad associations with the other examples as well (excluding real or nice walnut versions). My son has fake walnut, sort of a picture of walnut on particle board(?) Although he does not have the six by six white tiles with dirty grout he does have something equally appalling. But that is another conversation as his dwelling is a stepping stone. So, for me itâÂÂs not really so much that I do not care for any of the examples you have shown itâÂÂs more about the associations that seem to go with. Where I live there have normally been horrid so called updates to these types of kitchens over the years. It would be common to see a badly done tile countertop with dirty grout as well.

Bulthaupt, however, is not such a luxury brand in Germany, where you see it in many "tract" houses (contextually: condo apartments). Here's one white handleless BH kitchen from the 80's on sale for a reasonable $1k or so:

As a still fairly current German style, there are countless examples of how it's done "well" -- focussing here on Pal's mixture of wood + melamine + handleless cabs:

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}

LanaRoma, you bring back memories of East Germany for me:

Here is a link that might be useful: 1980's Bulthaupt kitchen for sale

I am using my counter-intuitive real estate search and so far this is what I've come up with.

This is a $3M shore house. So, it's well kept up, but it can be rented for thousands weekly regardless of the dated-ness of the kitchen. And ( I thought, anyway) *sold* regardless of the datedness of the kitchens (and bathrooms).

However, although there are plenty of time capsules being sold at the shore even in the upper echelons of the market, it seems like if the house is obviously intact they neglect to show the kitchens--which means to me that it's one of these oak laminate deals. It's not a condition issue, it's just that it looks the way it does. Because people who rent these house expect Perfect condition. (but for the most part don't necessarily look for the most current decor).

Can't upload the pictures but don't want to retype all of this so will try in a bit.

Here are the photos. Kitchen in context with the original house.

Can't say that I love it even though it is contextually correct and in pristine condition. I don't think black appliances help. But I also think this is a cabinet that Can't really take an update, when it comes to the door and drawer faces themselves.

Oak and melamine - have lived with two kitchens now that have those laminate doors.

The adjustable hinges they are hung on are a bad substitute for good carpentry. You are supposed to be able to adjust them but they are never level. The fiberboard doors are so heavy they work the hinges loose; the door comes plummeting down, perhaps missing your head, held by one twisted hinge. The twisted hinge often breaks.

The laminate itself chips and peels.

In short, it's not so much the look, but the shoddy, cheap, rip-off construction it connotes.

I wonder about the offerings from Wood-mode and others that Looked just like this, though. Anybody with experience of the higher quality version of these cabinets?

I think it's the melamine, which peels and discolors, or if the textured version, is really hard to clean.
The Siematic kitchens are lacquer.
Siematic from 1960.

and 2010

The white laminate cabinets with oak trim/ integrated pull is worse than the almond/ oak combination, IMO, because the contrast is so stark. And, proportionally, the oak strip is too wide. If it were narrower by a half or even a third, it would present as thinner, neater trim on the door rather than a leftover piece of wood tacked on the bottom.

I loathe these cabinets. We have an ocean of them in our office. When we updated the office several months ago (new paint, trim, carpet, lighting, countertops, mirrors and lighting in bathrooms, door handles throughout, etc--- fairly extensive makeover) the one thing we did not change was the cabinets, both for budgetary reasons and the time factor. We could not close the office for the renovation, which was carried out in stages over six weekends. Pulling out the cabinets would have then necessitated wall repairs, taking a day to move everything out, a day to put everything back in, and we just weren't up to it. So I asked the painter to prime the white laminate fronts and paint them with Sherwin Williams' Black Fox, a very dark brown. This was chosen in combination with the wall colors, carpet, and counter. The counter, a laminate that looks very much like corian, has tiny flecks of an orangey brown exactly the color of the oak. So, while I still do not like the cabinets, at least they are now "in context" with the overall scheme. As an added value, the combination of primer plus paint gave the fronts a very textured feel and look that is different from the untextured white fronts.

This is the front waiting room

And on around. The entrance floors are oak

Further in, notice the overall color scheme:

Here is a workstation with the awful white/oak cabinets painted as I described:

Another workstation, you can see the side of these cabinets:

You can see more of these in the bottom left side of this photo. What you can't see is that the entire left and back wall are wrapped in these:

Carpet sample:

During installation:

If you zoom into this you can see the orange fleck:

Modern fans

I have those in my house, built sometime between 1986 and 1990. In my case the wood itself was a bit darker, not so orangey, and they came with faux-butcherblock countertops and 4" white tile backsplash laid diagonally with wide "dirty" gray-brown grout lines.

The 2 problems I see are the cabinets themselves, and the context in which they are used.

In all the other modern style cabinets pictured on the thread, the cabinets all have very clean lines and are either solid colored or one solid piece of wood. When it's there the wood is a focal point / design element in itself (as opposed to just the stuff the cabinets are made of) and care is taken with the placement of the grain. I don't care for this style of cabinet, personally, but I can see that they were at least well designed.

With the 'bad' cabinets, they combine flat solid color + grainy wood in one item (something none of the good cabinets do). Furthermore, the wood used is orangey oak, which is both very common / ordinary and associated with rustic / country designs, and it has a very curvy profile in contrast to the plain, square doors. So you have these 2 elements that don't really have anything to do with each other to begin with, just tacked together (literally and figuratively) to make the door.

And on top of all of that, this cabinet style was a common builder style at one point, so most people see them and think of that and automatically associate them with being cheaply made.

They're supposed to be modern cabinets, except they're NOT, they're some sort of weird bastardized modern with a touch of country thing. And then people go and install them in any old room without anything else 'modern' in it. In that first picture, nothing but the cabinets is modern in design. In the 'good' pictures, the entire kitchen's design matches the cabinets. It makes them stand out - in a bad way. I do think the steel pulls look better, I wonder if people shyed away from them because they actually made the cabinets legitimately modern looking and most people didn't like that style to that extent.

My house is a pretty standard vaguely colonial-style townhouse of the late 80s/early 90s - nothing modern (in the design sense) in it, except for those cabinets. And they're in about 75% of the townhouses & condos in my immediate area that were built in that time period. I painted them and put steel bar pulls on them and now they look sort of better (and cleaner!), but they still don't go with anything else in the house.

What's funny to me is the other day I was outside and I saw my neighbor carrying out the same cabinets that I have from their kitchen, and then later carrying in some of those in stock boxed cabinets you get from the big box stores. And I thought, you do realize you're only replacing what you just tore out with the 2013 version of it, right?

Sirienne, thatâÂÂs funny! But you know in most of the 70âÂÂs or very early eighties townhomes it looks equally bad in my opinion to put in shaker style cabinetry or anything other than a flat panel (please, I mean no offence, itâÂÂs just my opinion). When I was helping son look for a townhome there were a few with the 2006 hgtv flip kitchens and it just didnâÂÂt look right in 1974 thru 1980 townhomes. I will be following this thread closely as he will need a new kitchen in the next few years. However, his is the sort of place where one would only go up two little notches above builder grade.

I had some very high end custom ones in my last home installed by the PO, a surgeon. Huge, well laid out kitchen with storage for everything. Every cabinet had ball bearing rollouts and the drawers were fitted with adjustable dividers and self close feature. The almond laminate was super easy to keep clean. Of course, it was a dated look. But the cabinets were far too high quality to trash and the layout superb. So when we were ready to sell, I had a cabinet guy make new doors and reface the boxes in a shaker maple (and traded out the easy clean laminate counters and backsplash for cheap granite. It was a hit and returned far more than the cost.

I sure wish I had them now. New house has site build cabinets that are arched oak, no pullouts, and are no where near the quality of the old ones.

How interesting that the integrated metal handles were developed by SieMatic and so many manufactures from the USSR to the US copied it!

Those aluminum handles and edgings were very practical. Never discolored or came loose like pulls/knobs attached with screws. I don't know if my parents' set had anodized aluminum, but the metal trim didn't stain hands or cleaning cloths.

I like the aluminum trim so much more in the Bulthaupt version posted by circuspeanut. There it meshes well with the plain white panels.

In fact, I've just realized that the chintzy pattern would look much more tolerable with the oak trim like in Pal's first kitchen. It could even go nicely with oak Windsor chairs and framed needlepoints in a weekend home in the country.

My view on laminates has improved somewhat thanks to the 70's butcherblock Formica countertop in our house. It's really indestructible and very easy care. No staining or chipping. It lasted 40 years and will last 40 more. After reading about granite countertops that need sealing and are prone to staining or chipping, I'd rather stick with the old thing.

In that shore house the kitchen looks ok, and it's consistent with the house style. I agree that the black appliances are too jarring.

It seems that materials and finishes become especially important in modernist furniture. Sleek and simple shapes put the emphasis on the materials. Proportions and scale are important too.

Quality materials age well and give the furniture that nice vintage patina.

1960s Siematic kitchen S6006

More on this house later, but I found a kitchen where they seem appropriate.

I think all wood cabinets would be too much, integral metal handles too slick.

The white laminate and oak reflects the wood trimmed stucco of other parts of the house:

The federal blue has context elsewhere. I would need to replace that early range/microwave combo with stainless. Maybe the original was.

How interesting the last pics actually work in their environment. I relate to the oak/laminate in doctor's offices, even new builds today as Industrial.

My daughter has a sweet cottage from the late 40s. The kitchen was flipped using these cabinets. I know where the came from, Restore, when volunteering there. Dozens of these kitchens were pulled from the local Air Base housing and donated.

They really do not belong in her little home, but I have no clue how one would change their style to soften this. On the other hand the cabinets have a bunch of unique storage inside, different from standard cabinets and well made. There are no door issues. And she has created a nice kitchen around them. I may be the only one that even notices.

I just wanted to say thank you to palimpsest for starting such interesting topics and all those who post such insightful responses. I learn so much here.

Here is my 2cents from my very limited knowledge of design.

I agree that often those cabinets (1st photo) is often seen now in disrepair. The ones I've seen in person did not seem to hold up well. When looking at the photo of the 3m shore house kitchen, the first thing I thought was that I bet those wood handles are worn and look bad in person. I'm sure that style with quality materials, in the right house looks wonderful.

Remember those DAT threads? I would love to see one using this style of cabinet. After that one using "arch" style cabinets doors. Those threads were great.

Pal et al., I found this thread while searching for cabinet door profiles. I have nothing to add of substance, but I'm having a tough time finding a door style I like. Perhaps you could weigh in?

I absolutely love the look of slab inset cabinets. I am buying full overlay. I absolutely hate the look of slab full overlay cabinets. Unless they're walnut or sapele, or some other gorgeous wood, but I have paneling in adjacent rooms and would prefer a painted door.

I thought I would pick a Shaker door, but none of the endogenous cabinetry in my house (1960s colonial revival) is Shaker, and I'm sick to death of seeking Shaker doors everywhere. Any recommendations? The stick cabinets I'm replacing have eased edge slab doors that are partial overlay. Thanks.