Open shelving is planned for out kitchen. I just shopped some wonderful glass for the backsplash yesterdy and now I'm more excited about it than ever!!!

i love the look for other people but for me, i dont want to see it.

i am all about containment. i think it just creates a clean serene environment.

No, but I wish I did. It looks nice.

I don't understand how this would work for anyone who actually cooks! You'd have kitchen grease / smoke / cooking smells (in addition to the dust) all over all your dishes all the time. Am I missing something here?!!!

I think it looks cute in a fairytale-look-that-i-could-never-achieve sort of way. I have a few dishes on display in my kitchen because they are cute but i don't think i could keep up with ALL my dishes out like that. And I don't want people to immediately see that 3/4 of my dishes are still sitting in the dishwasher!

I like this look. I'm not sure why, but I'd be afraid of things falling off the shelves. Also, you'd have to have really pretty dishes to make this work. And where do you put the ugly tupperware?

I'm thinking if I get open shelving, it'll force me to be a bit neater.

Absolutely!

I grew up in houses without any built in anything. We had hoosiers and we had farm tables, but even the "newer" stove was from the 1920s. Shelves were normal in the kitchen.

Having cats as an adult, plates and breakables go in enclosed stand-alone cabinets, but our massive collections of teas and spices go on custom shelves my husband builds, and then they're right at hand for cooking.

msjean, our shelves are right by and over the stove (and a pot-rack directly over the stove as well), and we don't have any problems with grease. Best guess is because we don't cook with anything but olive or canola oil, or don't cook meat, because we did have issues with grease in the kitchen when I was a kid, but things were getting fried in bacon grease and other meat drippings that were saved in a jar on the stove.

Once a month or so I do have to dust the spice and tea shelves, but that's more due to constant home improvement projects (and the same dust gets into the cabinets).

Not in earthquake land. We do have a cabinet that has glass in the doors, though.

I'm with Vunder. The next good 5.0 and there goes all our flatware. It's a pretty look. But not really practical for me.

This only looks good if all your dishes match and they're lined up neatly. What about tupperware? And I have other random stuff in my cabinets.

I love them. Not sure they would really work in my current kitchen but I love the idea & openness of them. I also like the all windows above look with only lower cabinets!

YES.

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE open shelving. (I'm a total neat freak so that helps with it all looking organized.)

My old apartment has built-ins with glass doors on the cabinets, so I don't technically have open shelving, but I feel the same prssure to display pretty things .

Too much dusting with open cabinets! Plus, I live in an earthquake-prone area, and while I like the look, I don't want to lose a bunch of dishes, or clean them up! Better stick to glass.

We put open shelves in our new kitchen and love it. No more upper cabinets for me.

I think this is pretty neat [esp. if you have cool looking dinnerware] though I guess my only concern would be dust and well, for a clumsy person like me, I'd probably end up knocking the whole thing down [doh!] but I love the idea. I think it's useful and a great way to display unique looking ware. For things that would be used more often.... I think I'd personally would want to keep those in cabinets.

I much prefer cabinets. We have all sorts of random dishes, no need to display that. In college, I had my dishes on open shelves due to lack of storage space and they always had dust on them which grossed me out. I always had to wash them before I could use them which got to be really annoying.