New kitchen

Silvertabby

We went for natural oak 'shaker' 12 years ago.

Still looks good, and we still love it. Doubt it will ever go out of fashion - there are certainly very similar styles in the kitchen shops today.

Davesnave

We went for painted ash. We chose ivory because that was the base colour; all other colours were sprayed over the base and tended to fill-in the grain. Also, we noticed on a long-standing advertising display, the base colour was showing where edges had been knocked or worn.

Whether painted or natural, solid wood rather than a plastic wrap seems worth it. For us, ash was cheaper than oak. I'd have preferred natural finish, but the ivory reflects light better in our north-facing kitchen.

Silvertabby

The bonus with solid wood is that it can be repaired.

After an incident with a lit gas hob and a tea towel (don't ask) one of our base doors ended up with a scorch mark about 4" by 6".

We took the door to a local furniture restoration guy and he did a wonderful job - you'd never know the door had been damaged.

Try doing that with a foil wrap!

cyclotron

We are actually putting in a grey/shiny kitchen - got the local ikea staff to help design it - but we still might go with a locally made one by a craftsman instead.

A trick that I noticed, which I havent seen mentioned, is that the quite flexible ikea kitech was built on standard white METOD carcasses, then nice coloured doors, of your preferred design/colour.

in my design, I realised that around £300 was panels which were the same colour as the doors, suggested as being installed to cover up all those annoying white METOD bits, et the end, on back of kitchen islands etc.

I used their online design tools and I was able to change all white METOD to a black METOD , and this has a decent simulated wood finish. It matches very nicely with my selected doors, and does not need covering up half-as much as the white basic items!

I was hoping to potentially save a grand, but it was only three hundred quid, still is quite a saving on something that I personally don't need, and the ikea 'experts' overlooked this option when they were proposing a design to me.

I am replacing an 18-yr old kitchen, but I can't just paint the doors as the plastic is peeling off roughly.

cranford

That's one big advantage with DIY Kitchens, you have a choice of 18 carcass and other fitment panels colours and can save on panel costs and even a few cm's in space, which in my case was vital.