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How do I Choose the Best Kitchen Cabinet Glass Doors?

Sheri Cyprus
Sheri Cyprus

Adding kitchen cabinet glass doors to wood or metal cabinets can make kitchens seem airier and brighter. Glass cupboard doors not only reflect light, but they can bring interesting new texture to solid door kitchen cabinets. To choose the best kitchen cabinet glass doors for your home, consider their location in your cabinets as well as their texture and ease of maintenance.

Snap-on types of cabinet door hinges allow glass doors to be easily removed for cleaning. If you're not able to remove kitchen cabinet glass doors to clean them, it's important to not spray this cupboard door type directly with water or glass cleaner. Rather, the water or glass cleaner should be sprayed onto a cloth before wiping. Otherwise, liquid can run down and get trapped in the door frame and possibly cause bubbling or damage to the wood or other cabinet material. After wiping the glass door with a wet cloth, a dry cloth should be used to remove all moisture.

Woman with a flower
Woman with a flower

The number of glass doors you should reface your kitchen cabinets with depends on your budget as well as the look you want. In some kitchens, even a single kitchen cabinet glass door can be enough to add style. For example, one glass-fronted kitchen cabinet could be used to display attractive glassware or dishware such as an antique tea set. In other kitchens, double kitchen cabinet glass doors create a stronger style statement.

It's a good idea to look at glass cabinets online or in person at a home supply showroom to get an idea of your style and price options. Then, stand in your kitchen and consider where the glass cupboard doors you like would look best. You should also have a good idea of what you’ll store behind kitchen cabinet glass doors since what you place inside those cupboards will show at least somewhat. Opaque or frosted glass doors have light-blocking texture such as sandblasting or etching, while clear doors are completely transparent.

Opaque glass cabinet doors hide the most mess, but brighter colors may still show through quite a bit. Brightly colored food packages and a jumble of cans, boxes and bottles aren't usually the best use of cupboards with glass doors. That said, an organized collection of pantry items can look really smart behind glass. Look at opaque and clear door styles to decide which type of kitchen cabinet glass doors would best suit your storage needs.

Discussion Comments

pastanaga
@umbra21 - Well, there is an alternative if you can't afford etched glass or if you simply don't want to replace the kitchen glass cabinet doors you have already.

We put bright stickers on all our glass cabinet doors that seem likely to cause problems. You can get special ones at the store which are meant to go on glass and will peel off without leaving any residue afterwards.

Point them out to your kids and they will soon learn where the barriers are.

umbra21

It's a really good idea to invest in glass fronted cabinets if you have a lot of expensive things but you also have children running about your house.

No matter how well trained the kids are, accidents often happen. So you want there to be a barrier between the kids and the objects which they might be brushing against or whatever.

If you have cabinets on the ground or large cabinets you should also make sure to get etched glass rather than plain glass.

Kids can be in too much of a hurry to notice plain glass and aside from the fact that they might damage your china, they could also get seriously hurt if they don't realize that there is glass in their way. This is especially true of younger kids.

irontoenail

If you like the idea of having etched glass doors, but also want to display some ornaments or plates you might want to think about getting a repeating pattern of some kind that leaves most of the glass clear.

If you have a fancy looking picture with a lot of detail, not only will they have to etch quite deeply, obscuring the objects within the cabinet, but your eyes will be drawn to the picture rather than to the contents.

But, if you have a repeating pattern the eye will automatically look past it to the things within the cabinet.

If you just want a fancy looking door though, you're better off with a more elaborate picture as a pattern will fade into the background.

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      Woman with a flower