The reason is cost. All of those cabinets are not cheap, so a lot of people elect not to add them. They are usually not very functional for storage due to how high they are (depending on ceiling height). But as far as aesthetics go, most people would probably agree that having cabinets to the ceiling (at least in 9 ft ceilings) is better.

What anj just said. It's a heck of a lot cheaper not to go to the ceiling.

I like my cabinets that go to the ceiling (8 to 9 ft) because they give me storage for large things, things, I use occasionally or only at holidays. Also having the to the ceiling height is cleaner. The tops of the cabinets get dusty and greasy. I have four shelves in my cabinets and one door to the ceiling.

You might want to consider ditching a majority of the upper cabs, and here's why. If you plan to age in this home, you don't want to get on a step stool or ladder to reach unreachable items above your head.

@Shannon_WI

I think the ceilings will be 9'. The models I've been in have had ceilings much higher than my century home's kitchen 8' ceilings.

I like what you said about solid doors at the top. I have seen glass doors on top and decorative pieces inside, but I think it would be impractical. I do like the bottom stack's translucent glass doors, though.

Find out exactly how high are the ceilings. Because if they're higher than 9', then the cost of stacking cabinets to the ceiling can become exorbitant. Knowing how high are the ceilings will dictate what you are able to do with the sizes/proportion of upper cabinets and the crown molding.

I love the look of cabinets to the ceiling. However, We chose not to go to ceiling. I have 9 foot ceilings I like the unclutter look of plain single cabinets. A slightly more contemporary feel to my space. Perhaps if I had even taller ceilings it may have worked.

It is easier to get into The Greasy Dust Society when your kitchen cabinets stop short of the ceiling or soffit.

How much storage do you have?

Although storage at the top isn't accessible for every day, it is still very functional to store items that are not accessed frequently. With 9' ceilings I would opt for some form of cabinets that met the celing rather than have blank dust catching space or a large soffit.

As others have posted, the only reason cabinets don't go to the ceiling in a room with normal 8' or 9' ceilings is because of the cost. In the scheme of things, the additional cost may or may not be significant.

I am short and I have toe kick step stools in all of the cabinets which have upper cabinets. They wouldn't let me access up to 9' cabinets but they do make a significant different in my being able to reach for things on the top shelf of my cabinets.

If the greasy dust on top of your cabinets is higher than your head, is it really there?

If your kitchen’s ceiling turns out to be 9’, and if the cost to stack upper cabinets turns out to be more than you want to pay (depending on the cabinet and the builder, it could be really expensive, or perhaps not), then insist on 42” tall cabinets with a 3” crown. The last thing you want to do is a puny 36” tall upper with 9’ ceilings. The 42“ tall cabinets look really tall and elegant, even with a space above. With 42” cabinets with a 9’ ceiling, I would not have a crown thicker than 3”. A thicker one woukd weigh it down and look fussy.

I think the idea of grease and dust on the top of cabinets is overblown, exaggerated, worrying about a problem that isn’t real. An old chestnut tip on this forum is to put wax paper up there (its the perfect 12” depth), and twice a year when you are changing smoke alarm batteries, change out the wax paper for fresh, easy peasy. My experience is that there is so little dust and grease on the wax paper that you can just change it once a year, but I have a very good exhaust hood.

What is the reasoning for not having the cabinets meet the ceiling?

In my tract/production house, the kitchen has a weird angle where the ceiling goes from 8' to 10' tall. The kitchen is L-shaped. My fridge, dishwasher, and sink are on an 8' exterior wall, but my range is on a 10' interior wall. All of my cabinetry ends at 8' tall; it would be far too weird otherwise. :-/

@M Miller - I guess grime might be dependent on your location. During the pandemic lockdown I didn't have my cleaning service come in and it was astounding how much grime and dust built up on all the surfaces which weren't cleaned once a week.

@Helen - yes, agreed, on the surfaces frequently used. But on surfaces that are more than 5’ above the counter, way up there? Certainly, a good exhaust hood will help, but is there really so much grease and dust collecting up in the air behind the crown molding? There’s not been the case in my experience.

@ M Miller - I am not talking about grime on surfaces that are used. I am talking about grime that accumulate on surfaces NOT used. Every single flat surface had depressing layers of grime. And I live alone and wasn't tracking in muck. I live in an urban air and so it is not just the eflluents from cooking that are the issue. I have to clean my balcony (in a highrise) often or else it becomes completely disreputable and grimy

It was creepy where it accumulated like a black layer on the top of the toilet tank in the guest bathroom that no one used

One word: soffits. Cabinets higher than about 7 feet are difficult to reach for most people without a ladder. Plus, of course, cabinets are expensive. Have the builder construct soffits above the cabinets up to the ceiling. Very much cheaper than larger (and inaccessible) cabinets, and the cleaning/dust issue is moot.

“Cabinets higher than about 7 feet are difficult to reach for most people without a ladder.”

Most women can’t reach beyond the second shelf, or even past the first front inches of the second shelf of the upper cabinets, regardless if those cabinets are 30” tall, 36” tall, 42” tall, or are stacked to the ceiling. A stepstool will be needed for above the second shelf regardless. Since a stepstool would be needed regardless of the height of the uppers, might as well get the cabinets to the ceiling if the budget allows. You can never have too much storage in a kitchen, so why forego the cabinets for a soffit - which, by the way, will also be costly if it’s going to look nice and not 1980s.

"If the greasy dust on top of your cabinets is higher than your head, is it really there?"

But if you listen very carefully it makes a sound.

Edit: "it makes a sound" is a humorous reference to "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" in case it went over your head. Which is another attempt at humor about another previous line, "is higher than your head". Good night everyone and God bless.

My wife is 5'-2" and she can reach everything in our 7 ft. high cabinets. Without a stepstool. And a soffit is made of 2x4s and drywall. About as cheap as you can get.

Red Skelton in case you missed that reference.

I only have 8 ft ceilings and I opted for 42" uppers with 12" of that glass. I have 42" now and I find the top shelves useless. Now I can use them for displaying the nicer occasional pieces and empty out the overloaded breakfront and china cabinet......you know, the family pieces you can't get rid of, but have no real use for.

We have 9 foot ceilings and all of our cabinetry goes to the ceiling. In some areas we have 48" uppers with crown and in other areas we have shorter stacked cabinets with the upper cabinets as glass display cabinets with crown. I love the look of cabinets to the ceiling. I am petite so I only store rarely used items on the upper shelves and use a step ladder. It really isn't an issue.

I think it's up to you. I have 9' in the kitchen and my cabinets do not go all the way to ceiling. I like both looks so IMHO if you don't care, save the $.

"My wife is 5'-2" and she can reach everything in our 7 ft. high cabinets. Without a stepstool."

I am sorry, that goes against the laws of geometry. How can a 5'2" person reach to 7'? Your wife has a 2' reach beyond the top of her head? We are getting offtrack here, but either your wife is much taller than 5'2", or her arms are a foot longer than other people of that height, or your cabinets are not 7' high. Back to topic.

The top of the cabinet is at 7 feet. The top shelf is around 6 feet. It's not rocket science.

We're building a new production home and in the model home, the cabinets didn't go up to the ceiling. I have never chosen to have my cabinets go to the ceiling because I don't need the storage and I don't like the look; it feels claustrophobic and adds heft to the kitchen.

I have lots of beautiful plates and ceramics from my travels and they add color to our kitchen. I change them out every couple of months. I need more display space than I do storage. In fact, I wish I could have open shelving above the refrigerator, as I did in my Austin house because that's useless storage space for me.

There's not that much dust, or grease, that accumulates up there. A good Swiffer extender will take care of that.

My wife is 5'-2" and she can reach everything in our 7 ft. high cabinets. Without a stepstool."

She climbs up on the counters...has to. ;)

The stacked cabinets will collect dust and grease too. If you have a shaker cabinet door or any door with detail it will still catch dust and grease so you will still have to clean something up there. You will either be cleaning the flat top of the cabinet or the rails of the cabinet door.

To repeat, a 7 ft high cabinet has the top shelf at about 6 ft above the floor. This is reachable by virtually every normal-sized adult. I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.

The OP has three choices. She can leave the space above the cabinets empty, perhaps filling with decorative objects or kitchen items which aren't used often, but there will always be the cleaning problem. She can extend the cabinets to the ceiling, which will provide more (hard-to-reach storage) and will cost significantly more. OR, she can fill the space with an inexpensive soffit.

I'm open to other options, but those are all that come to mind. I'm curious what she will decide.

"To repeat, a 7 ft high cabinet has the top shelf at about 6 ft above the floor. This is reachable by virtually every normal-sized adult. I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand."

This tickled me. What is a "normal-sized adult"? You were insisting your 5'2" wife could reach your shelves at 6' high, and 5'2" is on the short side. What you said indeed is "hard for people to understand" as you put it. And coming from an architect in which measurement is the essence of the profession.

So I just asked my 5'3" wife to come to the kitchen, took out the measuring tape to 6', and asked her to reach something at that height shelf. An inch taller than your wife, and standing on her toes, she could reach the edge of that shelf situated at 6', and perhaps, very carefully, nudge a bowl we have up there into her hand, but it would be a dicey undertaking since the bowl would be teetering for a bit until she had rolled it into her grip. Absolutely nothing deeper than the edge of that shelf was within reach. Taking out a stepstool would be way easier than the magical mystery of a 5'2" woman able to "reach everything" at that height, as you put it. Or just asking me to get it, which is what she does 99% of the time.

@RoyHobbs - I am about 5'4" and my experience with the top shelf of my cabinets in my 7' kitchen is exactly like that of your wife. If I stand on my toes and strain, I can kind of nudge something that is at the front but I would only do that for something that is safe if it fell like a small bag of sealed rice or the like. For anything which needed a firm grasp a step stool would be necessary.

I guess I am not a normal sized adult. I’m 5ft tall and can barely reach everything on the second shelf. If its something closer to the front I’m good. Forget the 3rd shelf. The cabinet above my fridge is extra deep and even standing on a chair I can not reach much beyond the very front. If I had stacked cabinets I’d be hauling out a ladder to reach anything up there. My solution-put most everything used on a daily basis in the drawers, first shelf, front of second shelf and lower shelves of pantry.

Decoenthusiaste, I refused to ditch upper cabinets in my new home. I am 6 foot 1, and I hated my old kitchen that had only ONE useful upper cabinet (the others were 12 inches wide, or otherwise of limited use). And sometimes my back goes out, leaning down is a pain. When I broke my ankle I could still deal with uppers on crutches better than the lowers. Much better, actually.

PS, since my kitchen is part of a cathedral ceiling, I opted not to have ceiling height uppers. That would have looked really weird.

Yes, cabinets to the ceiling are more expensive, but I like them so much better than an open shelf above -- or, worse, a snaggle-tooth cabinet look. Ceilings to the ceiling have a calm, finished look.

If you need a reason to avoid unnecessarily high ceilings, the cost of cabinets is it.

As for reaching the top cabinet, this is a good option -- though rather expensive: https://hideawaysolutions.com/product/step-180-cabinet-step-stool/?attribute_pa_material=walnut&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8vqGBhC_ARIsADMSd1A7m8zpIcud8vJVN_H25iSpDFJbf991XpGvz-uaZoP_H2YLnIFRVTAaAl4uEALw_wcB