Kitchen Cabinets
Kitchen Guides
Kitchen Confidential: 9 Ways to Get LowMaintenance Cabinets
Save valuable elbow grease and time with these ideas for easy-to-maintain
cabinets
Sam Ferris February 6, 2016
I'm a Houzz Contributor and the Marketing and Social Media Director for Tukasa Creations,...
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The heart of the home may also be the toughest room to keep clean. Every surface in your kitchen is
susceptible to crumbs, dirt, stains and splatters. This is especially true of cabinets. Fortunately, there
are practical ways to keep your cabinet maintenance on the lighter side. With ideas like choosing
fewer decorative details and picking the right color, these nine tips will make your cabinets easier to
maintain.
Sealy Design Inc.
1. Choose a door style with
minimal detail. Raisedpanel door styles have
nooks and crannies that
are magnets for dust and
dirt. Shaker-style and slab
door fronts don’t, so you
won’t have to spend time
scrubbing every recess of
your door fronts. If you’re designing a
traditional kitchen and want
a more decorative door
style, select a stain or paint
that has a glaze. The glaze
will fill the doors’ cracks
and corners and better
hide the dust and dirt that
your cabinet doors will
collect.
Amato Design Inc.
2. Opt for flush cabinet ends. You normally have two options for finishing the ends
of your cabinets: flush ends or matching ends. Flush ends (above) are plywood
ends that match the color of your cabinets. They are smooth and sleek, which
means you can run a cloth over it with a few swipes. They can certainly speed up
cleaning. Matching ends feature a panel with the same style as the door fronts, and while
they can bring elegance and character to your kitchen, you face the same
maintenance issues with matching ends as you do with raised-panel doors. There’s
simply more to scrub.
Susan Overton
3. Cut the trimmings. Designer details like crown molding, corbels, decorative legs
and light rail molding add more to love but also more to clean, especially ornate
styles. There are other designer touches you can use that require less maintenance. Try a
colorful cabinet paint, eccentric lighting or colored bar stools, like in this modern
kitchen.
risa boyer architecture
4. Pick a stain instead of a paint. Stains and paints have pros and cons. They can
both show crumbs and fingerprints, and paint definitely shows food stains and
splatters. That said, a stain is easier to touch up than paint. You can give a scratched cabinet
stain a quick spruce-up with a matching permanent marker. It’s often harder with
paint for two reasons. First, it’s hard to find a marker that closely matches a specific
paint. Often a touch-up kit from the cabinet manufacturer is needed. Second, paint
doesn’t take touch-ups the same way that stains do. You’re more likely to notice a
touch-up on paint.
Braam's Custom Cabinets
5. Go for a grain with a dark stain. If you’re set on a dark cabinet stain, select a
wood species that features the grain, such as oak or hickory. Grains don’t show
scratches, stains and crumbs as much as a clean wood species like maple does. It’s
also harder to tell that a cabinet stain has been touched up when the surface has
grains.
Jordan Lotoski
6. Invest in hardware. If you want fewer fingerprints and less wear and tear on your
door fronts, purchase door pulls and knobs for all of your cabinets. They help
preserve the integrity of your cabinets’ surfaces. Steer clear of stainless steel and chrome hardware. They show fingerprints and
water spots and are harder to clean. Oil-rubbed bronze, satin bronze, polished
nickel, brushed nickel and white hardware are the cream of the crop as far as easy
maintenance goes. Choose the look that best suits the style of your kitchen.
Howells Architecture + Design, LLC
7. Avoid glass door fronts. They may be windows to your kitchen’s soul, but they’re
also extra surfaces to clean. They manage to attract their fair share of dust, dirt and
smudges. Dirt can build up easily on glass door fronts that feature mullions. You
also have to keep whatever is behind those glass doors tidy. One benefit to glass door fronts is how inviting they can make your kitchen space
feel. Luckily, there’s more than one way to design a warm and welcoming kitchen.
If you want a low-maintenance alternative to glass door fronts, stick with lighter
cabinet stains like golden browns. They can make your guests feel just as cozy as
glass door fronts do.
Pickell Architecture
8. Reduce open shelving. Open shelving is a great canvas for displaying your
favorite decor and cookware, whether it’s on a wall, on an island or at the end of
cabinets. But it takes more time and effort to ensure that these spaces are dusted
and organized. The upkeep can become overwhelming along with your daily tasks. To shorten your to-do list, place your decor on necessary surfaces like dining
tables and countertops instead of unnecessary cabinet shelves. You can also use
pillows, chairs, bar stools and lighting as decorative touches.
Connecticut Stone
9. Protect your sink
cabinet from moisture. This
is more of a preventative
measure — it will help you
avoid issues down the
road. There are a couple of
ways to help protect your
sink cabinet from moisture.
You can order the cabinet
with an all-plywood
construction (most
semicustom and
prefabricated cabinets are
constructed of a mixture of
pressed wood and
plywood). An all-plywood
construction makes the
cabinet less penetrable.
You can also purchase a
cabinet mat, which looks
like a tray and is placed at
the base of the sink
cabinet. It will serve as a
moisture barrier and catch any liquid leaks or spills. More Kitchen Confidential: 10 Ways to Promote Aging in Place | 7 Ways to Mix and
Match Cabinet Colors | 11 Islands With Furniture Style | The Case for Corbels | All
Good in the Hood