Blending kitchen appliance colors gets a little tricky but if you are not ready to upgrade all of your larger kitchen appliances due to costs, we can all understand that. But deliberately mixing a stainless-steel stovetop for example with a white oven just will not work. Never has, never will, I hope. I found this image some time ago…not a good look, especially with white cabinetry. High end kitchen appliances these days have taken advantage of “Smart Technology” and transformed the look and feel of today’s kitchens and the way we approach modern kitchen design features.

Stainless steel appliances play a dominant role in many of the modern kitchen photos we feature on this blog. There are several occasions though where a customer upgraded to a very expensive white kitchen appliance that they are not ready to part with.

Mixing White and Stainless Steel Appliances

If you are looking to upgrade to a new set of white kitchen cabinets, the older off-white color you may have for a dishwasher or refrigerator can be the struggle we encounter. Stainless steel (black or steel color) works best with white cabinets. On occasion we have suggested custom appliance panels. These wood panels do a wonderful job of disguising the off-white color appliance because we can paint them the same color of the new white kitchen cabinets.



Any other color cabinetry makes our job of mixing appliance colors much easier. But 60% of our customers want white kitchen cabinets today. I do believe that mixing stainless steel appliances with white appliances can work with most wood stained cabintry and we love the grey painted kitchen cabinets trend we have been riding for a few years. I believe Grey plays very well with white and stainless steel colors schemes.
 


Please don’t misunderstand, I really enjoy many of the classic white and trendy “White Ice” finishes for refrigerators, dishwashers and cleaning appliances. When it comes to cooking, I lean more to the professional look of stainless steel and painted enamel finishes.

White Ice Appliances by Whirlpool

In 2012, we saw Whirlpool introduce a collection of appliance finishes that we really loved. The White Ice Finish offered a rich, glossy finish with stainless steel handles. At that time, we saw many ads and technical sheets that were promoting the benefits of White Ice and Black Ice finishes. Here is one of those videos.



Whirlpool is such a large company with over 10 brands like Amana, KitchenAid, Jennair, Maytag and several you never heard of that are popular in Europe and Latin America. I suspect the hype got lost as they rolled this out to all the other brands but we still see the finish in the higher end refrigeration products, but they don’t seem to be using the description, White Ice anymore.

Kitchen Remodel Ideas on a Budget

You will see that in most of our modern kitchen photo galleries, stainless steel appliances shine. But many of the luxury kitchen appliances can cost to much when you are ready to move forward. Don’t let appliance costs stop you from starting your project. For example, a new 36” French door refrigerator from Samsung today starts at $2600 before you add all the bells and whistles. A 36” six burner stainless steel range from Viking starts at $6200 and can be over $11,000 for the professional series. That all adds up quickly. 

So, if you are on a tight budget, it makes more sense to mix your older white appliances with newer stainless-steel appliances. We never recommend designing around the older appliances if you have plans to upgrade all your equipment within 5 years when that time is right. We suggest you design with a vision or goal and perhaps remodel in phases. 

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