This is our current kitchen with the old cream colored cabinets. We have since painted them white with new shaker style white doors. The appliances are all close together. We are also adding a white lower cabinet where the trash currently is which will be a pull out trash cabinet.

Sorry but most people want the appliances to all match. If you are looking a resale down the road you may want to stick with matching appliances. If you really want an appliance to "blend" you need to do it with a cabinet panel front insert.

Appliance whites vary, but no.

I have done white dishwasher with stainless appliance ( I would do all white if I could)

I would go with all stainless steel appliances. As Sina mentioned, appliance white is usually not the white most people use for their cabinets.

Thanks everyone. You’ve confirmed my doubts do I plan to do all stainless steel appliances.

I think the newer white dishwashers (with no obvious handles, etc) look much better than stainless. The stainless DW in OP's kitchen above makes the kitchen look choppy. That said, most middle of the road suburban buyers want stainless appliances all around - even if it looks worse :) If you're going to live there for a while, and if you can confirm the white will match (and not clash with) your newly painted white cabinets, i'd do white. We did it in our last kitchen and it looked great. Bosch white looked very chic.

Good thinking, ela!

While I think your appliances should match I can understand the appeal of wanting a white dishwasher. I was shopping for a white refrigerator this week and was surprised to hear white is becoming more popular again. I do love the clean look of an all white kitchen!!!

Stainless steel hater here. Glad to know white might be making a comeback!

The funny thing about stainless is.... it started as a high end look in the 1980s and early 1990s. The stainless finish was real stainless steel and usually involved a mark up. By 2000, they'd created a cheap way of doing the finish, that looked more plasticy (which is why fridge magnets often don't stick!) and every builders' grade special sold at the big box stores was in stainless steel -- $1800 for DW, range and fridge! In the mean time, higher end kitchens have tried to find all kinds of ways to differentiate from the cheaper looking stuff: slate finish, colored high end viking ranges, paneled fridges, white and black, etc. I think about the beautiful silvery/gold theramodor induction cooktops, red viking and aga ranges, and the white appliances i've seen in several high end renos in recent years. Granted, most people are still doing stainless - at all ends of the market. But i'm surprised the trend persists when it is so ubiquitous with cheaper kitchens.

H202 couldn't agree with you more on your statement, so true, what happens is that in some states the trends take longer to get and stick a lot longer that places where design is created rather than followed

I think the DW is the only appliance that I would do as white if the others were stainless, I guess because it blends in where the others don't. But it's up to you.

Stainless has been around longer than the 1980s. There were stainless steel appliances in the 1950s. My mother opted for stainless steel front panels on a KitchenAid dishwasher in 1975.

I have a small kitchen with white cabinetry. My dishwasher and refrigerator are white and my stove is stainless. In a small space with white cabinets I think the white appliances are visually less obtrusive than stainless. And, no, the whites don't "match" but it's not really noticeable in a working kitchen.

Unless you're planning to sell your home soon, I wouldn't worry about appliance color. Seems unlikely that ten years from now someone will say "I could never live in that house -- it has a white dishwasher!!!!"

I would do white. The L-shape space is so small, the stainless DW really sticks out.

As much as I hate the breakup with the stainless steel dishwasher in such s small space, there a small chance we will sell in 5ish years so we went with a stainless steel kitchenaid stove and dishwasher. At least the appliances match in style.

Now almost 2024, I’m finding this thread and am faced with the same dilemma. Just ordered a stainless steel dishwasher in our white cabinetry kitchen to match the stainless stove and fridge, and I’m worried that it will make our small, older kitchen look choppy. These are the only photos that I have, and the dishwasher is to the right of the sink. That is the longest stretch of white cabinetry, and the white dishwasher seems to trick the eye to make to look seamless all the way across. I hope I don’t hate the stainless dishwasher there. I’m thinking that the previous owners made that decision for the same reason. My new dishwasher is being delivered in three days, but I bought it from a small outfit, and I think I can still change my mind. What to do? 🤷‍♀️

@sfkathi, without seeing where the DW will go, I don't think it will be a problem to replace the white DW with a SS DW. It will provide continuity with the other SS appliances. I'm still waiting for my white fridge (which is in a white kitchen) to break down so I can replace it with SS. The white fridge doesn't look too bad, but I know its going to look better when it's replaced.

I agree with Theresa. You definitely made the right choice. When we bought our house all the appliances were stainless steel except the white wall oven that looked very out of place. So much better when we changed to SS.